Is it bazaar specific? [LWN.net]

Is it bazaar specific?

Posted Aug 22, 2002 11:24 UTC (Thu) by nenieorg (guest, #3378)
Parent article: The hard side of the Bazaar

I guess a large proportion of code produced within commercial
and/or "cathedral" projects never sees production, either for
small portions of code, or on a larger scale when the whole
project fails or gets cancelled for internal or external
reasons, and that's far from an unusual occurrence.

Of course, on commercial projects programmers still get paid
before the project is cancelled, but the open source
participant can still get a lot of fame (or notoriety)
especially when having worked on such a core subsystem
of the Linux kernel. And the code is still there, so
some of it will get reused one way or another if it's
any good.

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The public humiliation is

Posted Aug 22, 2002 15:52 UTC (Thu) by cwong15 (guest, #3013) [Link]

In a closed source environment, you can see code cancelled, and you can receive criticism. But on open source projects, you can get flamed publicly on mailing lists. Since a lot of the motivation for contributing to open source is public recognition, this sort of public humiliation tends to negate any payoffs. Not only do open source developers not get a paycheck to compensate for the grief or lost work, but a public wrecking of their reputation can be detrimental to their rent-paying careers. Email shows off one's worst side. An interviewer might try doing a Google search of a job seeker before an interview. Think about it: how would you like to walk into an interview and be asked about a supposed reputation of being anti-social, arrogant, careless, incompetent or not being "a team player"? That is something Marcin might have to deal with.

Is it bazaar specific?

Posted Aug 23, 2002 15:03 UTC (Fri) by alexr (guest, #2752) [Link]

Several years ago, I spent months working on a localization project for
an accounting system. When a lot of stuff was fully translated, the customer
decided to cancel the project.

This happens with cathedral/commercial projects. The good side is that you
(usually) still get paid. The bad side is that you spent so much time
working on stuff that nobody will ever use. With free software/free docs,
your work is still available for reuse; you may hope it's not fully wasted.