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Comment by okareaman | Hacker News Reader

I was seriously thinking of contributing to open source this past week when I started going over all the articles I've read from open source authors about entitled users and wealthy companies that don't donate but make profits off the projects. It's beco0me clear to me that large corporations like Microsoft have jumped into open source whole heartedly in a big part because they get tons of free labor. Not only that, I had a bad experience contributing to an open source project in which the author snidely told me I should have searched the code base because the bug was fixed when it wasn't, closed my bug report out and denied my pull request. So it seems to me a negative deal situation on both fronts. I'm know there are great open source projects, but I'll need to be very selective about them.

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It pleases me when corporations use D to make money with, even if they don't contribute. After all, D is licensed to specifically allow this - I have no business complaining about it.

That's what I meant when I said there were great open source projects like yours. Rust is another one. The energy, spirit of cooperation and welcoming community is a big plus for me. It would be nice if corporations kicked you a few bucks. For the life of me, I can't understand why the 100 millionaires and billionaires at the top of some of these corporations don't donate more.

There are a number of generous corporations and individuals helping us out in various ways, including cash contributions to the D Foundation.

I imagine you would feel differently, if you were right at the threshold where doing a good job requires all your efforts, where people rely on your work, but where you can't pay your bills that way.

A lot of good projects are getting stuck in that rut, and it behooves us to find ways to get them through it.

If people are relying on your work, it is perfectly reasonable to ask them for a contribution. There are other options like kickstarter, too.

I know more than one open source project developer who made a nice program, but it never caught on and the developer wound up discouraged and embittered. A common thread, though, is they simply put it up on a bare bones web site. They actively refused to do any sort of marketing, promotion, outreach, evangelism, read any books on sales and advertising, etc., which pretty much guaranteed failure.

BTW, in Apple's early days, Steve Jobs was a master at getting attention focused on Apple's computers. No successful outfit neglects that.

Thanks for the D lang. My younger brother used it for his final year project. He got an A. He has nothing, but praise for it. Fast, small executable size, etc.

Glad to have helped him!

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