🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16 Nov 1998 05:01:28 +0100, Axel Boldt <axel@uni-paderborn.de> wrote:
>P.S. I checked out your web page
>http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsffairshare.html and I like this list of
>worthwhile causes a lot. 

Thanks.

>One little thing though: you tell people that
>the most important contribution they can make is monetary. I disagree.
>By far the most important contribution to the Free Software movement
>is code. If they can't program, they should start with Python and they
>will turn into hackers in no time. Bad code is better than no code,
>because in a bazaar it will miraculously turn into good code sooner or
>later. Every new hacker is a tremendous resource for the community,
>while money is still somewhat besides the point. Personally, I like it
>that way.

My thinking has been changing a bit on this, and while I'd say it
differently than you do, I largely agree with what you say here.

The problem with "transforming money into good software" is that it
requires that somebody decide how best to allocate that money to pay for
development efforts.  

- Large organizations seem to think that expending $100M on a project
will guarantee good results; in contrast, hiring the one *right*
developer may accomplish better results at one thousandth the cost. 

- Giving the FSF (or some other such organization) a sum on the order of
$100M (as compared to the few hundred thousand that they have thus far
received) would have some further problems as the politics and policies
of resource allocation takes over their attention. 

The net result is that it is tough to guarantee high productivity from
contributions of money.  

In contrast, if you contribute code *that works,* that is already useful
without anyone else needing to make resource allocation decisions. 

I'm going to have to make comment in the essay to that effect, when I
establish the right wording.  Real Soon Now. 

-- 
"Microsoft: The People who Brought the Y2K Bug into Software Titling"
-- cbbrowne@hex.net
cbbrowne@ntlug.org- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>