ESR - the magic cauldron

Tue Jul 29 00:41:00 GMT 2003

> The real free-rider problems in open-source software are more a function of friction
> costs in submitting patches than anything else. A potential contributor with little
> stake in the cultural reputation game (see [HtN] ) may, in the absence of money
> compensation, think ``It's not worth submitting this fix because I'll have to clean
> up the patch, write a ChangeLog entry, and sign the FSF assignment papers...''. It's
> for this reason that the number of contributors (and, at second order, the success
> of) projects is strongly and inversely correlated with the number of hoops each
> project makes a user go through to contribute. Such friction costs may be political

And don't forget these guys like me who'd like to contribute but never
get told where to obtain these f** papers.
-- 
Thx,
 Frank