I kind of like the idea of it… I think. But not for my own applications. Not right now anyway.

It’s not so much an ideological position as a don’t-quite-get-it position. For me [I admit] there is still a lot of self/ego in the art of programming, so I can’t help but be a bit precious/protective about my code — It’s not that I’m afraid of giving away secrets, more the idea of others stepping in and assuming control over my creation.

It seems to me that open source is best suited to software that is intended to serve everyone. After all if everyone is going to use the software, then why shouldn’t everyone have the opportunity to contribute? Large, modular projects like operating systems and browsers make perfect sense to me as open source candidates.

But ordinary applications? That seems different somehow. Small apps are not necessarily intended for everyone to use, and in this case I think it’s ok to have a single personality driving the code.

Plus in theory I have to make money at some point; and while I haven’t yet made a cent from any of my [closed-source] proprietary software, this is largely for lack of trying — I never properly finish it, I don’t promote it, and I haven’t yet asked anyone to pay for it. But ultimately I think it would be very very nice to be able to make a living writing and maintaining my own software, rather than scraping by on occasional contract work which I have little or no interest in.

[ I am assuming that a lot of people are motivated to work on open source projects by the whuffie factor, but any satisfaction I would gain from working in this way would be far outweighed by the thrill of being paid actual money for my software. ]

So I’ll get that whole business plan organized Real Soon Now…

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NB: This post was inspired by my misunderstanding of a post on John Lyon-Smith’s blog … I assumed he wanted me to post the JujuEdit source code, whereas all he actually said was: "Where’s the download link?" to which I will provide the answer shortly, since I am working on a new version of JujuEdit this very day…

Flo’s Notepad2, the freeware text editor John refers to, does indeed look very good, and goes a long way in demonstrating how lame it is for people like me to try to take a position against Open Source on the basis of quality. The Notepad2 docs point out that the editor is based on the Scintilla source editing component, which is itself free, and so I begin to see how this whole caring-sharing thing can lead to some really good software.

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