[IPython-dev] Should I still contribute to IPython ?
David Warde-Farley
d.warde.farley at gmail.com
Tue Dec 18 13:26:33 EST 2012
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 5:36 PM, Aaron Meurer <asmeurer at gmail.com> wrote:
> I remember reading about a study that said that open source projects
> that have funded developers actually get less contributions (or at
> least fewer contributors) because there is a mindset of, "why should I
> contribute when there is someone who is paid to do it? Surely that
> person/persons will get around to fixing the issue themselves." I
> think the email Matthias received is indicative of this mindset.
> Clearly it is wrong (obviously, more contributions are still more
> contributions), but I think you should really think about how to make
> this permeate through your community, so that you minimize the number
> of people who end up thinking this way.
One thing to emphasize (and I know I'm preaching to the choir here,
but this should be emphasized to *other* people) is that, as much
faith as I have in the core developers, they are neither omniscient
nor psychic. Participation in the form of bug reports and feature
requests is therefore valuable, but the fastest path to a new feature
will always be to take a stab at implementing it yourself. Even if
your implementation is hacky, imperfect, or incomplete, it gets the
conversation started in a much more tangible way. It also reduces the
bandwidth commitment of a core developer, somewhat, because they no
longer have to figure out exactly what you mean based on a mere
description of it.
Cheers,
David
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