Let me just say that I get it.  You can’t donate to every open source script that you use.  You’d be broke in a short period of time.  That being said, I’ve donated to IEs4Linux.  I own Mozilla t-shirts.  I’ve given money to the Dreamlinux community.  I’ve sent money to Brad Sucks, Harvey Danger, MC Frontalot and countless other musicians in return for their music.  I figured that although not all the people downloading my scripts would be in a position to compensate me for the scripts they were using to make money, surely the wheel of fortune would stop on my spot every once in a while.

Four people donated.  The total equaled less than three billing hours for coding. So how many people downloaded the script?  Hundreds of thousands.   The last version alone of the most popular script was downloaded over ten thousand times.

Check out the Google search.  I name my scripts only after ensuring that the proposed name garners zero results on Google.  This helps me keep an eye on the script’s use and popularity.  Of the 116,000 results you see in Google, after the first 6 results, almost all are the script in use by people that didn’t even take the time to change the default page title from the script name.

So, of the hundreds of thousands of people using my script, four people felt compelled to repay me.  It’s kind of mind boggling when you take into account that almost 100% of the installs were used to try to make more money.

A couple days ago, I was reading a post from a gentleman that wasn’t smart enough to figure out the URL path to the script he installed( http://www.domain.com/public_html/automonial  was his best try) and I was trying to help him.  During one of his responses, as I was reading sentences laced with capital letters and bolding, I realized that I just no longer gave a shit if these people were able to install my script.  Further, I no longer wanted to provide anything to them.  See, I was able to handle the fact that hundreds of thousands of people would use the fruits of my labor to make money without ever feeling the need to thank me for the ability, but now I was expected to take shit from people too stupid to determine the URL of their script install?

I decided to join the ranks of the millions of open source developers that decided to not develop openly any more.  It was frustrating to realize that not only did people have no issue with using you, they could give two shits less about the continued development of the very script they were using to make money.  They got what they needed and didn’t give a flying fuck if you were developing tomorrow.  In the case of the people that weren’t smart enough to install the script on their own, they saw nothing wrong with receiving assistance via the forum, sometimes having me install the script for them, before going on their merry way, again without any compulsion to thank me for making them money.

I will always consider open source to be the right way to develop.  Further, I appreciate it more than I did before trying my hand at it myself.  I will still thank those willing to provide something to me without restriction, encryption or other crippling aspect by donating to their project.

I have to.  I’m obviously the only one keeping their coffers full.

Well, Openmoko released the second gen phone to five distributors in France, Germany and India.  If you’re wondering why the US hasn’t seen it, it’s because they’re embracing the markets that show an open mind.  I-Sheep need not apply.

What does this mean?  Well, unless you’re a nerd, chances are great that you won’t notice the subtle changes.  Further, if you do notice them, you won’t care.  But for those of us paying attention, this provides an alternative to the developers that lock you into proprietary hardware, software and contracts.  Where Apple releases updates simply to squash hacks that their users have created to make the hardware work the way they want it to(i.e. for them), the open model hands all the necessary information over and asks that you share your work if you come up with something cool or useful.  It’s a community that not only allows you to make your hardware work for you, it helps.

Maybe Mr. Wozniak should pick one up.