Open source or love story

What can motivate a developer to write software just like that, not for money, without initially receiving a penny, but only wasting all his already missing free time? There are actually many reasons and people have repeatedly tried to analyze them. On many sites there are a huge number of polls, with a variety of answer choices that people respond roughly evenly. It is understandable, everyone has different motivation. However, my task today is not to try to derive the “theory of the open-source”. My task today is to tell about a small project that I have done recently. And who helped me to achieve good positions in life, even though no one knew about him.


So, how did it all start? I have repeatedly tried to do something just like that, honestly. And, honestly, it never happened to me. First, when I was married for the first time, it seemed to me that I did not have enough time for this. It seemed, because looking back at the day passed, each of us understands that this day could be spent more intelligently, correctly allocating resources. and secondly, even if I sat down “by the pen,” I immediately got bored. Yes, when you sit with a piece of paper and when your tongue is out, you catch drops from its tip, drawing UML diagrams, transition and interaction patterns, it seems like a blin ... cool, now I will sit down and everything will be in chocolate! But in fact, you sit down and realize that you can’t do anything because ... Well, FIG know ... just because it’s already boring, you have to do it, nobody will pay, and there is no guarantee that it will be popular ...

However, once I came across one program ... I just want to write its name, it is not an advertisement at all, dear reader. Her name is postsharp . Its purpose is to implement aspect-oriented programming in C #, and you can read about it in my earlier publications. And then I wanted to make her a competitor. Similar in functionality, but more flexible (I then underestimated the difficulty of the task) And you know, I understood what I was missing. I realized that in order to do something just like that, you have to get the idea. It is to get infected like a virus, like a disease that will tickle your pleasure centers, forcing you to do it just like that, not looking for benefit from outside or fame. You understand that they will laugh at you, that at first it will be a govnokod (because in the rush of desire of the new version, you don’t understand what a govnokod is), and this will have to be corrected later, but your fingers will hit the keys and you will feel pain in your knuckles fatigue. You write and write ... And then comes the crisis ...

It seems to me that everyone was in crisis ... If you look at the history of commits, you can clearly trace when the crisis came. For example, in my commits it is clear that sometimes I even did this at work. And sometimes - dropped out of development for a whole month. What is the cause? I can not give an exact answer to this question. Sometimes it seems that no one will need this project except you (in the case of my brainchild - a competitor PostSharp , this idea was reinforced by the fact that for some reason it is not very popular in Russia, and for Europe or the States where it is very popular ... I don’t know ... I do not know how to promote the product there). Sometimes - that I never get money for him. Those. for me, part of the motivation was, after all, the hope of monetization and return of satisfied users. Ah, deceiver I am a deceiver, I deceived myself. I thought that just like that, but in fact like everyone else, for the sake of money and fame. Part of the reason was also the use of the Mono :: Cecil library, because when you use it to its fullest, you begin to understand that the guys still have a lot and a lot to finish, despite the 6-year history of the library. However, the crisis was torn, and I continued to develop.
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And why did he rush? Because there was an unpleasant aftertaste of an unfulfilled task. Unfulfilled labor that needs to be done. Plus, it was spurred on by news from the off site of my competitor, who had new features coming out, which was becoming faster. I wrote unit tests not only for performance, but also for the fact that my code is faster. This was not always possible. Programming turned into a race with a competitor who didn't even know about me! However, the main incentive was for me to add a link to my project on the postsharp site in the alternatives section (at the very bottom, my project is NSurgeon )

After that, I contacted them, we started a conversation. They turned out to be glorious guys who brought up the business together, both married and having children. Gael is now waiting for the twins and as a father is very happy. And the project ... It hovered a little ... Now the reason is clear as a tear: I work for those to whom I made a competing product. Those. The main motivation for me was different ... I did not even understand the main motivation myself, but I wanted to work there and make the original.