On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 22:23 -0700, "Marvin Humphrey" <mar...@rectangular.com> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 02:40:31PM -0700, Keith Curtis wrote: > > I recommend separating things out into using free software versus > > writing free software. > > They're intimately tied, aren't they? > > One of the great freedoms of open source software is the ability to > modify it > -- whether that means a sysadmin hacking a broken installer until it > works, a > developer monkey-patching a Ruby module, or what have you. If you could > read > OSS but not modify it, it would be a lot less powerful. Using OSS > becomes > writing OSS almost right away.
I think you overestimate the majority of developers. The bar to usage is downloading a resource, which is relatively easy. The bar to modification is at minimum downloading the source and building it, which is effort enough. Getting your changes accepted involves identifying the relevant community and engaging with it. This is something that many developers will neither find easy, nor feel inclined to do. I would say those that *are* inclined to contribute back are the exception. Upayavira > > So I suggest keeping those separate aspects in consideration. > > Convincing people to depend on Linux, Python, etc. (and giving back > > any bug / fixes to existing public codebases) is a relatively easy > > step and moves things in the right direction. > > It does seem like the policy should start with usage and progress through > mailing list participation, minor contributions such as bugfixes, to > ongoing > development of major features. > > Marvin Humphrey > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscr...@apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: community-h...@apache.org
