Re: Some Changes to GNOME Security Tracking

[Peter Gutmann <pgut001 () cs auckland ac nz>]

Russ Allbery <eagle () eyrie org> writes:

> One solution that anyone in open source software communities has heard about
> for decades now is to turn open source software maintenance into a job with a
> paycheck. Then it doesn't necessarily have to be fun

It can still be fun, and in some cases more fun than pure open-source.
Consider the difference between "we have a practical real-world problem that
we need solved, there's real-world demand for it, we can describe it in
detail, and we'll pay you to solve it" (commercial user) vs "i have some me-
only feature that I want you to add to your code just for me and I'll whine
endlessly on Github/Discord/whatever if you don't" (open-source).  That's an
extreme for illustrative purposes, but with commercial users you've got
direction and focus while with open-source you've got a kind of free-for-all
where people want this and hack in that unless you have a strong benevolent-
dictator model or small group of maintainers who screen everything to keep the
codebase stable and bells and whistles to a minimum.

Peter.