The secret life of open source developers [video]
Hmmmm I dunno...<p>You make software available to other people, for free. But it&#x27;s for them to use it (else, what&#x27;s the point ?). So you&#x27;re exposing yourself to <i>users</i> and users behave like users.<p>It&#x27;s not because you give away something for free that its value (and the way that value is recognized, for example, by being polite) is any different.<p>The only thing you get by making it is the right, as a creator, to make it the way you want. That&#x27;s the freedom you get (and what a beautiful one). But it doesn&#x27;t give you any power on those who&#x27;ll use it (well, except for the license); in particular, you have no power to make the users polite.<p>Now, of course, I prefer to talk with people who are polite and who express gratitude for the work I do for free. And of course I don&#x27;t like rude people. But making FOSS doesn&#x27;t change the human nature of you users. Even if you put hard work in it, you sacrifice a bit of your life...<p>So, the overall tone of the presentation seems a bit off to me. I would have preferred something like : here&#x27;s why we do it, what motivates us, the success, the failures,... But the user, well, they just are what they are, software can&#x27;t fix that.<p>(in case you wonder, yes, I&#x27;ve made some open source projects, one success, on failure and guess what, the success, at least to me, was measured by the number of users).