Re: Why contribute to Koha?

[Chris Cormack-6]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 6:43 AM, Baytiyeh, Hoda <hodabn@...> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am a Ph.D. candidate in Instructional Technology at the University of
> Tennessee. My dissertation focuses on what motivates people to contribute to
> F/OSS projects. Though it may seem obvious to you, many non-programmers are
> still suspicious of OSS and think there must be a catch. Can you help me to
> demonstrate why talented programmers are willing to work for free? My survey
> should take no more than 15 minutes and asks for no identifying information.
>
Ahh see theres the ticket. The vast majority of programmers who work
on Koha aren't working for free.
I worked on Koha for 9 years as my job. All the programmers at
Biblibre, or Liblime get paid also.
Sure we do some non paid work too, and some people don't get paid
anything, but the majority are.
But you have just explained why people are suspicious right there,
there is a general misunderstanding that F/OSS means uncommercial.

IBM pays people to work on the Linux kernel, Redhat pays its staff,...
F/OSS does not stop people being paid for their work. What it does do
is allow people to choose who they pay, or indeed to make changes
themselves.
In fact, with F/OSS its more likely people get paid to programme and
less people get paid to resell that programming effort again and again
and again and again.

Chris


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[MJ Ray-2]

"Chris Cormack" <chris@...> wrote:
> Ahh see theres the ticket. The vast majority of programmers who work
> on Koha aren't working for free.

Yes, just so.  TTLLP workers are paid to work on Koha, although we
also do some other Koha work as part of our "Concern for community"
efforts.

Sorry for not filling out the survey, but I'm short on time this month
and I didn't see what I'd get out of it.  Also, it reported "We are
sorry but your session has expired. Either you have been inactive for
too long, you have cookies disabled for your browser, or there were
problems with your connection." - I have cookies disabled for most
sites which don't show an EU-style privacy policy.

Regards,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:[phone]


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