D-etractions A real world programmers view on D

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:27:39 -0400, Joseph Rushton Wakeling  
<joseph.wakeling at webdrake.net> wrote:

> On 30/08/12 14:21, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> I fail to see how this story has any moral except, "some people hate  
>> money".
>> Which really isn't most of us here.  Myself in particular, I have very  
>> little
>> time to work on D because I have a full time job so I can support my  
>> family, and
>> a paying side gig.
>
> Yes.  Now consider how you might react if the parts of D you were  
> contributing to were also being worked on by people who the D project  
> was paying for.  You might well feel, "Well, that stuff already has  
> sufficient resources dedicated to it, so I'm going to use my limited  
> free time for something else."  That's not hating money, just a rational  
> reaction to the fact that your limited volunteer time should be put  
> where it's needed most.
>
> But if enough volunteer contributors react like that, the project  
> suffers.

I cannot relate to that at all.  Nor do I think the project suffers.

When I work on a piece of D, it's because I want it to work the way I  
want.  I want to have influence over its design so it appeals to me.  It  
has nothing to do with who paid for what.  In fact, I don't even care  
about getting credit, I just want a language that I enjoy using!

I throw out suggestions all the time, but they are almost always ignored.   
But when I actually contribute, it has a much better chance of success,  
and I have had several of my contributions included in both Tango and D2  
phobos/druntime.

My gut feeling (no research for this, just how I feel) is that people who  
feel their time is better spent elsewhere, but truly want to contribute,  
probably would work on some other part of D that *doesn't* have resources  
dedicated to it, or a library that uses D.  I don't think D suffers for  
this.

I think some people have a somewhat biased attitude that if a project  
isn't developed by all volunteers, it's "impure".  I know there are some  
who won't even touch D because of DMD's license, even though that has  
nothing to do with produced code :)  I don't know if this applies to your  
anecdote because I know nothing about the community there.  But there  
isn't much we can do about that, and if we don't have those people on  
board, I don't really think we are worse off.  I want to have people that  
are good at solving problems, good at writing code, and *want* to  
contribute, not people who have alternate agendas.  We cannot cater to  
every social viewpoint, so the best thing we can do is produce the best  
language we can, and if we do, others will want to use it and contribute  
to it.

Now, if D got to the point where it frequently preferred code that was  
paid for over code that was donated, solely based on the fact that one was  
paid for and one wasn't, that would not work out well.  We can't be biased  
in either direction, and then I think our community will be fine.

> Simon Phipps (former Sun Open Source chief, now on the OSI board) has  
> written an interesting article about the dynamics of money in open  
> source projects, worth reading:
> http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/09/should-you-donate-to-open-source-projects/index.htm

I will check it out, thanks.

-Steve