[LRUG] Paths to open source contributions

[Matthew House]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Vahagn Hayrapetyan <vahagnh at gmail.com>wrote:

> @Andy: I am familiar with the "only build stuff you'd use yourself
> approach". To my mind, a very sustainable and quality-oriented one. Rails,
> after all, was extracted in this way. Basecamp became a success this way. So
> yeah, definitely an approach that has proved itself.
>
> @Matthew:
>
>> So my question is are you a contributor just because you happen to release
>> things, no matter how small and potentially useless.
>
>
> My answer to that would be: NO. You're a contributor if people know and use
> your stuff. Otherwise why not just keep it to yourself.
>
> / Vahagn
>

I share a slightly different view to you I think. My thoughts are that if
there are no consequences to opening code that you have written then why
*not* release it.
I like sharing code even though I'm pretty sure that no-one apart from me
uses it and very few know it. In my view it seems a shame to write something
that *might* be useful to someone some day and then keep it closed[1].

so if you look at it in your view, ie no-one that I'm aware of uses my
stuff, then I certainly don't qualify as a contributer, even though I have
code available. :P

Just trying to play devils advocate here and my main point is that the
definition of an open source contributor is pretty loose.

[1] that and github is a really handy place to keep stuff if you frequently
work from multiple machines in multiple locations :)

cheers
Matt
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