[saagarjha]

Collapsing them misses the nuance that I am specifically talking about. It’s kind of like when the ice cream parlor down the street gives our free samples and you decide to go “well, actually, they don’t have to give you any samples because they can refuse service to anyone so in fact there is no difference in them providing free samples and not providing free samples” and it turns out that people can offer things in good faith without having to promise them in a legal contract. You definitely shouldn’t prepare a lawsuit based on the free samples but it’s totally reasonable to visit every week to try their latest flavor.

[blittle]

That's a poor analogy. An ice cream parlor offers free icecream purely to market thier product and drive business. An OSS dev gets nothing.

[saagarjha]

Nothing? Not at all: an open source developer gets the marketing/publicity benefit just like an ice cream parlor does. Why do you think companies open source their things? And as a solo developer, I get tons of high-quality inbound leads for job opportunities, get to interact with lots of smart people (many whom I end up forming long-lasting friendships with), and get other people to help improve and support my project with me. Plus I get the warm fuzzy feeling inside or high moral ground, or whatever you want to call it. If you’re not getting that from your open source work, why are you doing it anyways?

[yawaramin]

Would you do your current job for free for, say, six months to earn 'exposure' and 'warm fuzzy feelings'?

[saagarjha]

That’s a false dichotomy, because an ice cream parlor doesn’t stop selling ice cream when they give out free samples, any more than most open source developers quit their jobs (or stop searching for one) to work on their personal projects. Plus, you’re kind of asking the wrong person anyways, because I think I actually do significantly more work for free than I do for what I get paid for, just for those warm fuzzy feelings (exposure being a nice bonus). Plus, I happen to be financially stable enough to probably do this for longer than six months if required even without a full-time job. I basically did this last year when switching jobs (actually around five months, while interviewing around at a leisurely pace) and it was incredibly enjoyable. Felt like I had retired early and could just pursue whatever I wanted to learn or make: if you can afford to do it, I’d strongly suggest giving it a try.

[yakak]

Great, and the if the project you make for a bit more than six months of lots of dedication succeeds people might realize you are an expert in something and try to hire you into a job that is more than full-time and/or doesn't allow other programming with a very nice offer. I would expect you to take that job, but Internet haters will disagree.

Now the project someone chose for its high amount of free unguaranteed support goes off a cliff of no maintainer..

In my experience, I value projects with minimal maintenance over years by a large number of more selfishly invested contributors over the "excited just to be here" projects.