pouët.net

No, really! Folks want open-source features they can't code/draw/compose themselves (example). If they would do your grunt work, would you spend the resulting free time building features for them? I'm doing a research paper on the question and would very much appreciate any thoughts you'd be willing to provide in the dreaded anonymous online survey or this thread. Thanks!

PS- I'm a slacker - I've only ever submitted one contribution to an OSS project and it wasn't up to the project lead's standards :/ . Someday...

Hm. Depends on the amount of work necessary and how the resulting feature / end product is used. If it's commercial then I highly doubt that I would work for that kind of incentive :)

If it's hours vs. hours my non-existant car would as clean as never before...

I am unable to answer to most of that. If I worked on a hobby project anyway, other things would motivate me (people like the project, small donation, maybe sex). But most of the home stuff I do alone and can't relate to the hobby. If someone helped me with the house I would say thanks, maybe pay him. But I was gonna do demos anyway for free.

Oh, you meant that literally about the car. I thought that it was just a fanciful example, and different ones would be in the survey. I figured the menial tasks would be more contributing to other parts of the project that need help (website, documentation upkeep that's not directly related to the source code, etc.) so more time could be spent with the code.

Of those that apply in the survey it just seems like I wouldn't necessarily spend that extra free time programming. Maybe, but I do stuff rather sporadically. :)

The moral is always: With Open Source, you get what you pay for.

I use OoO Writer at home, and its OK for simple things, but it really is a flaky product and regularly irrecoverably hangs on me, and its clipboard format handing is rubbish too.

However, as I only use it for simple things its not too bad.

Maybe. If it takes me over a week or two of evenings (plus bug testing though that's not too hot in the OSS world) to do a significant feature that someone wants off-hand, would the other person cut excess foliage in the garden, mow the lawn, wash the (non-existant) car, fix the electrics on one of my guitars, cook my freezer full of delicious veggie food, clean my apartment from top to bottom and give me neck rubs for the last four days?

Probably not.

That said, I think that these time-sharing bank things are great for small things that don't take a lot of time. I could exchange some computer help for some help in the garden, for instance. It's just that any kind of significant contribution to any software project racks up the hours really fast.

I'd be happy to, if the scale of the project matches the scale of the task I've got for them. And the project is something I like working on and can estimate the time for.

@Starchaser - :) Background of the question - I do tech support for friends and family and I know a number of firefox users who will probably never feel comfortable contributing. However, I will never be able to hold a candle to their Real World skills. :)

Thanks to all for your thoughts and responses!

no, id instead take a very highly paid programming contract for a few days and make enough money to pay people to wash my car, clean my house, cook and so on for a month.

now that's capitalism .. :D

here, bulgarians wash your car for 7 euros, so that gives you 5 minutes of opensource hackery from me!

I wouldn't let open source freakos anywhere near my property.

Of course I will spend hundreds of hours of my free time so I can get my car washed.

I'm amazed that you have hundreds of hours of free time :)

It all depends on the amount of work involved... both in the coding part, and in the grunt work. If *I* want to contribute to a free open-source project, I'll do it for free. If *you* want me to contribute to your open-source project (whatever it is), and I'm not interested in the project... then that's just "paid work" to *me* (the fact that it is open-source, closed-source, or whatever makes no difference: I'll be coding for your needs, and you'll have to pay me).

Paying in money or paying in work is no different to me (if I have the need for that work and I'd pay for it anyway), however, I'll value the work as it is valued: washing a car is just not worth a lot of programming time.

What's the opensource-prostitution exchange rate?

One hand job per revision.

Are those version number or SVN revisions?

There must be some way to automate that using post-commit hooks.

How many Push and pulls does it take to complete a version?

if(female && pretty_face && big_boobs && horny && naked) yes();

A gun to your head and a blowjob, now hack this fast!

One bump before I start on the first draft later today - very brief survey (one screen) if anyone else is willing. Much appreciated!

Preacher/visy/smash/maali/Jcl - thanks for pointing out the relative value - very good points! I guess I just need to get contributing :)

Looking at the survey, I started wondering.. I've never been in a situation where I'd say, gosh darn, I'd love to hack on the apache server but I have to stack all this firewood!

I only stack firewood couple times a year, and it's a refreshing change of pace from sitting next to a computer.. =)

One item on your list is on a completely different category than the rest - "repair your house". Those things are generally in the scale of 10kEur/a pop in Finland (like new windows, electric repair, heating systems, pipes, etc), so I guess what you meant by it is something else than what I'd mean by it..

Other things in the list are relatively small chores, in comparison. (And yes, I'm ignoring the clone thing).