When it comes to home computers and the software that runs on them I’m not a developer I’m a user. A technically advanced user, yes but a user nonetheless. Same goes for software that runs in the so-called “Cloud”. It takes a certain mindset, a certain way of thinking to sit in front of a monitor and write line after line after line of code that I simply don’t have. Never could wrap my head around the concept of programming and I’m hardly alone in this respect.

Now this doesn’t mean I can’t track down a buggy piece of open source software to a certain line or lines of troublesome code–I can. What it means is I don’t have the knowledge nor the kind of experience (nor the inclination to get any) to be able correct the problem all by my lonesome.

So I head off to the appropriate forum and/or bug reporting site to find the answer or to report the problem in hopes that I will eventually find an answer. I have no problem making out a bug reports, participating in developer forums or helping out others who might be having a problem.

I’m fairly good at this and a whiz at Googling so I usually get along just fine.

So this is what I don’t understand: Why do the developers of Open Source Software even bother? I mean, what’s the point?

Simply put, open source software is software where the code that makes up that software (often called the “source”) is freely distributable. Anyone can download it, modify it to suit their needs, correct bugs, add features or even use it as a base to build their own version of the software. And there’s no cost associated with either using it or obtaining the source code.

The kicker is that the majority of developers of all this open source software do not get paid for their efforts ergo what’s the point?

Am I missing something here?

Take the current situation. I’m typing this post using TinyMCE which is a web based, javascript HTML/WYSIWYG editor–which is open source.

This TinyMCE editor is part of the WordPress install which runs my beloved old blog here. WordPress is open source.

I’m accessing all this using Mozilla’s Firefox–which is open source.

And all of this is taking place using the Ubuntu 9.10 desktop OS–which is also open source.

As I stated above, the majority of these developers (who range from all over the world) do not get paid. These folks are doing all this work, putting in their own time and effort to help build these programs and operating systems and they just give it all away at the end.

Every piece of software I mentioned above, relatively speaking, has only a handful or less of paid developers working behind the scenes on any one of these projects, say around 5 to 10 percent? That leaves around 90 to 95 percent of these developers, support people, testers, forum moderators, documentation writers, wiki maintainers and whoever else is contributing their time on any given project, working on a strictly voluntary basis.

And then they just give it all away? This is a business model? I’m amazed this stuff even exists let alone work as well as it does.

So what’s in it for all these non-paid individuals anyway?

Does it look good on their resumes? Does it give them a deep abiding sense of personal satisfaction? Does it help them in their chosen field? Do they do this just because it’s there? What?

Why am I able to sit here writing up this post using all this rather high quality free and open software that was developed by people who weren’t paid–that I didn’t have to pay for?

What’s the catch? Why does it even exist?

Perhaps I’m just too cynical but the world I live in there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The only thing I ever get without handing out a chunk of change is the junk mail I find in my mailbox every morning. And yet here I am munching happily away on a new post without having paid for anything except  hardware and hosting. And as far as the hardware’s concerned this computer I’m working on right now is 7 years old which, by today’s standards, makes it effectively worthless. Yet it’s fast, efficient, reliable and does everything I need it to do. And the operating system and all the software that’s running on it didn’t cost me a dime.

People developing quality software for no pay and then giving it away.

I just don’t get it.