Paying for Open Source

Why do people find it so hard to consider the thought of paying for open source?

I had a gentleman approach me from the Portland-area asking for some advice on finding a developer to do some custom Thunderbird coding most likely in the form of an extension. They had asked me because they knew I was doing some stuff with the Mozilla Foundation already and that I might be able to find someone pretty quickly as they needed this on short-order.

I decided to head over to irc.mozilla.org and join #thunderbird to just see if anybody in there had an idea of where to look. I asked simply “does anybody know where I can find a developer to do some custom Thunderbird work for pay? This would be a very short-timeline.” The responses I received were like “you obviously don’t understand open source” or “why would anybody pay for open source?!” Are you f*’ing kidding me?! People pay for open source all of the time. As a matter of fact, its a pretty lucrative deal.

The most frustrating part about that is thinking that by paying for software … or more importantly paying for a software innovation that will then become open source you are somehow tainting the code; it’s not pure or something. That’s just crazy talk. Open source has a great place in business and that place is in paying for innovation. The business is the innovation.

Companies that truly grok open source understand that paying for the development of an open source project is a good thing in the long run for their organization. Especially when their organization’s “main thing” is not developing software. If others can realize some joy from it, or even develop it further, then that is good for the company/organization that makes the initial investment.

That said, if anybody got this far on this posting and might know somebody that would be willing to get paid to innovate, drop me a line and I’ll get you in touch with some people that need a Thunderbird extension …