Jun 30, 2009 Comments Off
Talking about Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen – Example: How to contribute a patch to an Open Source Project like DasBlog
Lots of discussion going on around the death of NDoc and Open Source as a viable option for .NET projects. A lot of this harkens back to some of the things discussed in “Is Open Source a Crap Idea” from a a few months back.
I said Open Source is free like a Puppy. It requires care, feeding, and in the words of Pete Seale, if you beat it it will run away.
Phil says Open Source is free like a Flower. “I think of Open Source software as being like a nice set of flowers in a common space such as a courtyard. Nobody that lives around the common space owns the flowers, yet they all enjoy the presence of the flowers.”
Jeff says Open Source is free as in Free. “The highest compliment you can pay any piece of open source software is to simply use it, because it’s worth using.”
From my point of view, just USING Open Source software doesn’t fix bugs. Volunteers fix bugs, whether they are a member of the project or not. (Assuming you haven’t got an Open Source Sugar Daddy or a company that supports your work.)
