Open source product is a marketing tool
vitonsky.net
Big tech companies invest a lot of effort to sell us the point that every good programmer must have their own open source project. Many programmers have open source side projects, but quite few of them can explain why they waste their time on it. As a result, they work for free, to make big tech rich. Actually, open source can't make money for programmers, but may be useful as a promotion tool for them.
  • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Many people enjoy programming, you know. I’ve got like ten reasonably-sized projects and I haven’t posted about them anywhere. Because I built them to scratch my own itch, both in terms of functionality I could use and the itch to build something, no matter what it is. I’m not wasting my time, because I’m doing something I enjoy.

    • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
      1·
      3 months ago

      Same here. Bold of anyone else to assume that I want to share my open source project. I don’t mind if someone finds it, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I promote it. Haha.

    • who@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Prelude to most of my projects:

      1. I want a tool that does X, with conditions Y, and without Z.
      2. I search for such a tool, and discover that it doesn’t exist.
      3. I build it myself.

      Epilogue:

      I now have exactly the tool I wanted. It makes my life better all day, every day, with no foreseeable end.

      Happy user.