> Open source is different, it’s an artifact, it’s a transposition in code of what you really want to do, of what you feel software should be, or just of all your fun and joy, or even anger you are feeling while coding. And you want it to rock, to be perfect, and you can’t sleep at night if there is a fucking heisenbug.
This has been my experience.
I have refined my development skills, as a direct result of my OSS work (I've been writing open-source for over twenty years). During this time, I was a manager, at my "day job," and the company I worked for actively discouraged managers from being engineers. I wasn't having that, so I did OSS on the side, to keep my chops up.
Also, I worked for a company that insisted on a rigid, waterfall-based development methodology, that I thought resulted in sub-par software. It worked great on hardware; not so great on software.
Through my OSS work, I was able to prototype and refine a methodology that is a great deal more flexible than that used by my corporation. I feel that it results in far better software.
I have not experienced a whole lot of the troubles that Antirez encounters; mostly because I haven't authored anything of the scale of Redis. I have, however, authored another project that has become a worldwide standard framework (for a much smaller demographic), and the best thing that I did for it (and for myself), was to get the hell away from it. It's being maintained by a team of fairly brilliant and energetic folks that have taken it to the next level.
I really feel that if I had remained "in the mix," I would have stunted it.
As Twain once put it: "I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure."
This has been my experience.
I have refined my development skills, as a direct result of my OSS work (I've been writing open-source for over twenty years). During this time, I was a manager, at my "day job," and the company I worked for actively discouraged managers from being engineers. I wasn't having that, so I did OSS on the side, to keep my chops up.
Also, I worked for a company that insisted on a rigid, waterfall-based development methodology, that I thought resulted in sub-par software. It worked great on hardware; not so great on software.
Through my OSS work, I was able to prototype and refine a methodology that is a great deal more flexible than that used by my corporation. I feel that it results in far better software.
I have not experienced a whole lot of the troubles that Antirez encounters; mostly because I haven't authored anything of the scale of Redis. I have, however, authored another project that has become a worldwide standard framework (for a much smaller demographic), and the best thing that I did for it (and for myself), was to get the hell away from it. It's being maintained by a team of fairly brilliant and energetic folks that have taken it to the next level.
I really feel that if I had remained "in the mix," I would have stunted it.
As Twain once put it: "I cannot help but notice that there is no problem between us that cannot be solved by your departure."