My OS X Programming Blog

A while ago I wrote that I believe people use free software because it’s gratis, not because it’s libre. But what motivates free software developers? I use the term “developers” loosely here to include people who are generally associated with free software projects: some of them contribute no or very little code but “hang out” at mailing lists and newsgroups.

Some would have you believe that they are motivated by software freedom, contribution to the computing community, and generally helping people, etc. I don’t believe that for a minute. Perhaps Richard Stallman is alone in living by his free software motto. Yet some of his actions have caused me to wonder about that sometimes. And the others? I think they do free software because of ego and self-promotion.

So here are my Top Ten Signs That Free Software Developers are in it for Ego, Not Freedom.

1. “Packagers” make minor changes to Carbon Emacs and make their own “distributions”. They seem much less concerned with adding their changes to the main CVS. Sometimes they don’t make available the source to build these distributions. That’s in fact a violation of the GPL!
2. Distributions are given fancy names like Enhanced Carbon Emacs, Aquamacs, YACED, etc., but they are really just packaged Carbon Emacs. I suppose packagers think they’re entitled to name a software after making a few small changes. We aren’t talking about big Linux distributions here people.
3. The use of imprecise words like “enhanced”, “based on CVS Emacs”, “Aqua”, etc. in descriptions of distributions implies more improvements than have actually been made.
4. People package and redistribute Carbon Emacs typically sell and promote other products at their websites.
5. There are people who mislead and those who plain lie! My favorite example is a website that lists Carbon Emacs as one of the programs its owner have “ported or written”. Huh? If he did that, what did I do?
6. “Experts” answer all questions on Emacs/XEmacs mailing lists and newsgroups by first regurgitating their opinions on usually irrelevant (or borderline related) topics.
7. New mailing lists were eagerly established to discuss the Carbon port instead of people being sent to join the main discussion at emacs-devel. Of course, a few more people can now become “experts” on these new lists.
8. A significant number of people who make no or negligible contributions to Emacs/XEmacs code hang out on mailing lists and newsgroups and act like real experts and bully novices and other posters. People who know even less then chime in to make matters worse!
9. Disproportionate number of “official” Emacs/XEmacs developers/maintainers versus number of improvements actually made to the CVS code. That reminds me of research papers with huge number of co-authors. But that’s something for another list :-).
10. The Emacs-XEmacs split (need I say more?).

If people are offended, please read that list again :-)! These aren’t just my opinions, they contain many facts that can be verified independently. So do you believe me now when I say software freedom is not the biggest motivator for people who write free software? It’s their ego? At least I’m truthful enough to admit that as my main motivation :-).