I’ve got a deep respect and admiration for the Open Source philosophy. I’m not a developer myself, so I can’t get to appreciate if the traditional comparison between the cathedral and the bazaar is still valid… or ever was. The fact is, as an Open Source user, those magic words that are used so many times to praise certain projects don’t always reinforce that community concept usually tied to the Open Source philosophy.
It should be that way, for sure. A project that is born under that idea, o that adopts it later on its way, becomes the perfect candidate to invite others to collaborate. That freedom to modify the code, that literal invitation for you to try to improve things by breaking them (and learn a lot during the process) should be almost addictive for those programmers. But it is not.
We’re watching this every time in Open Source projects lead by a lonely developer that believes firmly in his idea, but that after inviting everyone to join the project is even lonelier. Requests for collaboration on Open Source projects are frequent, as are people standing out with or without developing experience (one can also contribute in translation tasks or in bug hunting). Others can do it for sure, I’m too busy right now.
Several factors are involved in that developer’s solitude. Laziness, of course, is an important one. The incentives aren’t usually too attractive, as most of the projects are absolutely aspirational. They’re not created necessarily in order to earn money, but to solve problems or needs that are important to the creator. And to solve that problems with that wrong idea that something free (as in free speech) is free (as in free beer).
And then, of course, you’ve got the human nature. We love to join sides, and the bigger the side is, the better. Being a little lamb is nice. Supporting that weird, crazy idea, and spending our time on resources on something that will only give us personal satisfaction? Too complicated. Oh, and we can join that side later on. When the project is mature and solid. We can be one of those early adopters that weren’t really early adopters.
At that point another dangerous problem can appear: the usual flame wars, that are specially brutal on the Open Source side. I’m pretty tired of the typical haters gonna hate argument. KDE vs GNOME, Ubuntu vs Debian vs Arch vs Mint vs whatever, vi vs emacs. The main advantage of that freedom that Linux offers is also its main problem. If you don’t like something, you can modify and adapt to your needs. Usually only yours. And so, we’ve got too many versions and many efforts diversified that weaken the whole thing. 285 active Linux distributions make this argument clear.
The more isn’t always the better.
That personal satisfaction usually is the only reward the creator will get. It’s nice for him, but doesn’t attract other developers that often. Specially when talented people have another option. One when their projects may attract venture capital funding and bring the other part of the equation that make people join that crazy idea: money.
These are tough times to attract developers with the Open Source argument. It seems that personal satisfaction, freedom, or the prospect of creating a community (easier to say than to do) are no longer enough that vaid.
And so, here it comes. Developer’s solitude emerges again.
