[clug] Video editing under linux and financial incentives.

[Martin Pool]

On  9 Jun 2004, "Edward C. Lang" <edlang at tsumakin.net> wrote:

> Isn't the satisfaction of enabling a large number of people to remain at
> the height of their productivity and creativity, using OSS instead of
> using proprietary software, incentive enough? 

Um, apparently not.

Wanting to give Ed Lang good software for free (i.e. charity) might be
a motivation for some developers, but I don't think it is the main one
for most of them.  There have been several good studies on motivation,
some of which are on http://opensource.mit.edu/.

Most not-for-profit developers are interested in having the software
improve in a way they care about, both for technical enjoyment and so
that it scratches their itch.  It follows from this they want to gain
a big user base, some fraction of whom will help develop it.  They
might want to help out other developers whose software they use.

There is an economy, but not a purely monetary one.  To direct a
project you need to buy influence.  You can buy it with cash, or you
can earn it through respect -- just like other social groups.  You can
get respect through code, documentation, filing useful bugs,
publicity, constructive suggestions, etc.  I realize your list was
mean to be constructive, but the developers probably know these issues
already.

You can lose respect by posting illiterate "you suck!" rants (a la
Telek), or making threats like "I won't use it until..."  Threatening
to leave is pointless if you weren't contributing in the first place.

p.s. Do you know about Display Filters in gimp2.0 and xgamma?  I'm no
color-matching expert, but combined with an sRGB monitor they seem to
get pretty close.

-- 
Martin 
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