On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Dan Hatton wrote:
I quite agree that no-one should try and oblige volunteer developers to write anything they don't want to. However, it's rather unfair to describe non-developers as partaking of a "free ride." There are well-documented (for example, in _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_) examples of their contributions like writing formal documentation, and well-crafted bug reports. I can think of two less well-documented, but more widespread examples:
Why is it unfair? I wasnt jsut desciribing non-developers. I was descirbing pritty much everyone.
I cant really be arsed to sit here and write a kernel for my computer. I probably could - that is I dont know yet, Im writing a process manager for Taurus for my third year project, which is quite a difficult part of the kernel really, so I reckon if I could do that, then I could write a kernel.
I cant be arsed, Im using Linus's kernel, :. , i am getting a free ride...
The downside is perhaps it dosnt suit me perfectly, OR I have to do something to it to make it suit me (for example one email program dosnt do precisly what I want so i write a bit of code to make it suit my purpouses exactly.) those are my two options at this point.
[the rest of your email i am in agreement with]
J