Big tech companies invest a lot of effort to sell us the point that every
good programmer
must have their own open source project. Many programmers have open source side projects, but quite few of them can explain why they waste their time on it. As a result, they work for free, to make big tech rich. Actually, open source can't make money for programmers, but may be useful as a promotion tool for them.
Many programmers who start working on new personal open source projects wrongly assume that building something cool guarantees users, fans, and revenue will follow. Maybe it’s because they have seen too many cool stories of influencers on Twitter and believe it is true.
It’s statements like these that remind me just how different the internet is for some people. I don’t think I’ve ever strayed far outside of the “look at this cool thing I made!” parts of the open source community. The idea of chasing fame and monetization isn’t really a thing in those circles, let alone “influencers” shilling content like that.
It’s statements like these that remind me just how different the internet is for some people. I don’t think I’ve ever strayed far outside of the “look at this cool thing I made!” parts of the open source community. The idea of chasing fame and monetization isn’t really a thing in those circles, let alone “influencers” shilling content like that.
Most successful projects I’ve seen are: I needed/wanted X, so I made X and now I’m sharing it with you so you can use it and maybe help me out.