This is so inspiring, thanks a lot. It's great to see that there are now resources going into supporting OSS developers that require only an idea and pedigree, and not a finished product and a business plan.
At last someone speak up about that very subject "doing impossible things" without being negative about the fact the community (of haters) forbids that behavior.
Innovation is NIH somewhat, somehow and that is a Good Thing.
I don’t want to work for a company that only bolts together off the shelf components, although talking to me a few times you might get the idea that this is precisely what I want.
I hate working at a place where people are so busy being clever that they reinvent everything. You steal from the younger devs an opportunity to learn, and you externalize the cost of your poor documentation and interface consistency onto your coworkers instead of spreading it out over the entire industry. This is NIH.
What you should do is pick a segment of your problem space that has mediocre tools and make something much better. The 80/20 Rule seems to work quite well here, when I see it applied, which is not often enough.
The other side. We spend 80% of our time on the last 20% of the code. Make it count for something. Do something that differntiates you from competitors.
I had that thought as well. We need more optimism when it comes to programming. This talk inspired me to stop putting off my side projects because they seem intractable.
Innovation is NIH somewhat, somehow and that is a Good Thing.