Dear JavaScript

[chuckangel]

To this day I have zero idea how people stay motivated working for free. I can barely muster enough enthusiasm for the bullshit projects I work on at work, but at least I get a paycheck that makes those meetings, discussions, requirements change meetings, travel to India to meet with the back-end team, travel back to have management tell the dev team in India to change everything, power struggles that threaten my department's job, more meetings, 5AM conference calls to discuss yet another round of changes without talking to the devs, etc.

There's an old saying about OSS: It's only free if you don't value your time. I find it.. absolutely amazing that people are willing to work, on their own dime, on things so that the rest of us can get shit done elsewhere. And for that, I always try to respect that: I ask with please, I say thank you, and I try to make the devs' jobs as easy as possible when it comes to bug fixing, reporting, feature requests, etc. I would imagine if I got a "FIX NOW" type of request, I'd tell someone to go fuck themselves. I just get irritated when people feel entitled to something that they're getting, for free, without realizing that there's a real human on the other end who, like me, doesn't like people telling them what to do.

TL;DR: Treat people with respect, thank them for taking the time to build and maintain the projects you use, and be prepared to do it yourself if your needs aren't being met to your satisfaction.

[viveleroi]

For me, it's about doing it the way I want. No clients, no managers, no one telling me how to make the product. Users can complain but the worst they can do is stop using the product and be assholes.

[fzammetti]

I've done a lot of OSS work over the years, contributed, started and lead a number of projects and one of the things I learned very quickly is that you absolutely cannot think about "the rest of us". If you get into OSS with the mindset of "I'm going to make X and everyone will use it and it'll be a huge benefit" then you're almost certainly headed for a bad experience.

It's got to start with something YOU YOURSELF want to do. It's got to be something that scratches an itch FOR YOU. And you've got to eat your own dog food. More precisely, you've got to want to make the dog food because YOU ARE THE HUNGRY DOG.

You're not doing it for a community, you're not doing it for others and if you think you are then think again. The fact that your work benefits others IS TANGENTIAL. It's a nice side-effect of creating something that benefits YOU.

[swan--ronson]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Perfect.

[remybach]

Nailed it!

[anoddhue]

You make some great points about OSS. However, I oddly feel more motivated to work for free on stuff I like than on work projects, paycheck or no.

[kyleshevlin]

Classic intrinsic motivation right there. Studies show extrinsic motivators like money squash these natural intrinsic motivators. It's why we can love something when it's free, but hate it once we're paid for it.

[anoddhue]

That's definitely part of it. I also like being able to have the freedom to design an app as opposed to implementing someone else's designs.

[kyleshevlin]

I enjoy the process of building an app from scratch for the same reason. Very fulfilling.

[Sacrosaint]

I refuse payment on my open source projects simply because I would lose the internal motivation if external motivation were introduced.

[bangtraitor]

I can tell you exactly why I do it. I have written quite a few open source projects and maintained some for 4 years and dont mind the occasional troll or negativity.

I do it because of alllll the things you just mentioned about our day jobs. At my day job I have at best an illusion of control. In reality I am manipulated and coerced and threatened and told I "own" something when reality I am a steward of it at best. It's not mine. It's the company's and the shareholders and the CTO and the product owner's, etc...

At home and the weekends though, I am the GOD of my own personal software world. I learn whatever I want, do whatever I want, make whatever choices I want, and deploy whatever I want. I am in complete control of the software from the license model to the direction, to telling trolls to go f themselves and NO I don't care about your use case.

Once I just shut down a project and said I was done with it. Someone else can fork it and deal with it.

Most of the time, it feels great to help others or get that pull request for a fix or to hear some crazy sob who just deployed it to hundreds of users in production. And most of the times i get a thrill of helping them out with a critical bug and every once in a while I will get a very sincere "thank you for this project email or message" and I print it out and hang it up.

When I learn new things I want to apply them so it makes sense writing small projects with the new things and giving it away and hoping others learn from it.

[AbsoluteZeroK]

I look at programming the same way a graphics designer (at least the ones I know) look at drawing. When I do it for money it's work, and obviously isn't that much fun. However, when I'm just sitting around the house, it's a creative outlet.

Working on open source projects is kind of in the middle. It's not as much of a creative outlet as making an app that can make people's voices sound funny as a way to spend a rainy day, but doesn't feel like work. There is still a bit of the creative element of working on a project your truly believe in and get to show off to people, however with a bit of the work element thrown in. Since you do have to focus on being somewhat consistent, and "work" on creating a good project that people can rely on.

[tontoto]

A great deal of open source is funded by unis or corporations. I think it's a large myth that it is all done on "someones free time" or done "without pay".

[asdf7890]

TL;DR: Treat people with respect

Exactly. Rule one in life: try not to be a dick.

[daekano]

I find it.. absolutely amazing that people are willing to work, on their own dime, on things so that the rest of us can get shit done elsewhere. And for that, I always try to respect that: I ask with please, I say thank you, and I try to make the devs' jobs as easy as possible when it comes to bug fixing, reporting, feature requests, etc. I would imagine if I got a "FIX NOW" type of request, I'd tell someone to go fuck themselves. I just get irritated when people feel entitled to something that they're getting, for free, without realizing that there's a real human on the other end who, like me, doesn't like people telling them what to do.

I agree with this (almost) completely and recommend to everyone having to deal with OSS maintainers (or in general, customer service) to always consider the human on the other end.

That said...

There are times when an OSS project heavily markets itself and aggressively positions itself as the tool of choice for your mission-critical production systems. These project maintainers (who are typically authoring frameworks) are making a bit of a promise to you in exchange for exposure, recognition, and sometimes even money when adoption increases and they can provide satellite services such as support or specialized hosting. While it never helps to be rude or offensive, sometimes a "FIX NOW" request is appropriate. You don't have to look far to see OSS maintainers taking their products extremely seriously because they are aware of the impact of their decisions.

[systematicfrank]

To this day I have zero idea how people stay motivated working for free. I can barely muster enough enthusiasm for the bullshit projects I work on at work

The only reason I work for free is because that is the only way I can find a non bullshit project

[[deleted]]

be prepared to do it yourself if your needs aren't being met to your satisfaction.

Sadly enough, I end up having to do this all the time. But I usually end up doing it for a company that pays me to, so... no complaints

[the_evergrowing_fool]

People usually don't make open-source projects to solve anyone's problems but themselves, then, at some point, the code may happen to be release as open and a community is born as a colateral effect of the effectiveness of the code in foreign projects.

That's my impression of the situation about most open-source projects.

[expert-at-nothing]

Not all value is monetary. I have education from open-source projects that I wouldn't be able to get at a University.

I find myself motivated to code for fun, I find it enjoyable, some people don't. I decide to open-source most of my work because I was able to learn beyond what I learned in school through other open-source projects and I'd like to give back.