[bjourne]

Everybody should know that working on free software in general is not healthy. :) There is no way that the fame, name recognition in the community, gratefulness received, CV padding or whatever makes up for your hours of free work. The time investment wont pay off.

BUT if it is the act of writing code you like, then that doesn't matter. The "work" itself is the reward.

[cyphar]

> Everybody should know that working on free software in general is not healthy. :) There is no way that the fame, name recognition in the community, gratefulness received, CV padding or whatever makes up for your hours of free work. The time investment wont pay off.

How about personal satisfaction? That's definitely worth a lot. Not to mention that I got my first job from free software contributions alone. That's also worth something and did pay off (of course that's not why I contributed to free software).

[jswny]

I disagree. My experience with free software, albeit small, is a positive one. I gain immense satisfaction from knowing people use and rely on pieces of software that I've written. When my users ask me for updates and make feature requests, I get excited and it really drives me to work. In addition, any time I see my software in use in the wild, I feel like a proud father watching his child grow up.