Thoughts on: “Hugh MacLeod asks, if open source is so great, where are all the open source billionaires?”
I found this article on CodingHorror and while the guts were interesting I felt it was missing an extremely important piece so I figured I’d remove some pie from the hole in my face to spew a few additional words.
The question itself assumes something that I hope is quite incorrect, that open source folks *desire* to be billionaires, or are overly motivated by money. My hope is the vast majority of people are in fact NOT motivated by huge sums of money but rather, by softening the screams in their head when faced with using crappy software and hopefully lowering that tone in the heads of others by contributing their work.
We all need to make a living and I make a living developing software. That’s not really true because it’s the smart guys I work with who actually develop the software… I just take the credit. But I get much more satisfaction out of developing a great solution to a problem than I do cashing the check which allowed us to do the work in the first place. I get enormous satisfaction out of delivering something that I know married code excellence with time and money constraints and seeing it perform its job as expected or better.
So where are all of the open source billionaires? They’re hacking code, they’re getting rid of inefficiencies or vulnerabilities, they’re taking feedback and working til the wee hours to push up a new build because the task itself is important and provides the satisfaction. And while money is needed, it is not the focus of all (or most?) who work in open source land. And since we’ve built our business on open source software; On the backs of those non-billionaires, I’d like to say, “Thanks folks!”.
Side Note: If you’re Warren Buffett and are thinking of ripping up a billion dollar check with my name on it, I retract all of the above and will step on anybody’s head to prove it! Otherwise, I really really meant all of that stuff.
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