Roy and I were discussing how he could contribute to AudioMan and, being the good team player that he is, he offered to fit anywhere he was needed. This is a great attitude to have -- team players are definitely valued on any project. But it's not really the way a lot of open source development has been working.

To refresh my memory I went back and re-read Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar (CatB). It talks about the differences between traditional commercial software development (cathedral) versus succesful open source development (bazaar). If you're going to be working on AudioMan or following its development, this is probably the minimum amount of reading about open source development that you should do. It's not that long. :)

While I was glad that Roy was willing to work on anything I remembered a simple quote from CatB: "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." The idea is that developers with a vested interest in the code will produce better work. You use the code you are developing so you intentionally give it better quality. This is also known as "eating your own dog food."

Developers that are put into roles in which they don't necessarily fit or want aren't ideal because they don't have any incentive to do a good job. With paid programmers, in theory anyway, that's not the case because they are being paid a salary, are evalutated and can be fired if they screw up enough. The problem there is that you start getting "good enough code" and unmotivated people. To quote Office Space, "that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired." It's funny and sad because it's true. I don't want to regurgitate CatB too much -- you should read it yourself.

The more interesting ESR essay actually is Homesteading the Noosphere. In it he expands on CatB and explains the so-called "hacker gift culture" that makes open source sofware possible. He goes into the psyche of the open source developer to find out what drives him to do free work.

I'm not saying there won't be gruntwork on AudioMan - there is on any software development project. But as ESR says, open source developers also have to be self-fulfilled to do good stuff. I have to do my best to allow for those opportunities just like Eric and Linus have done. If that means I'll probably end up doing a lot of grunt work then I'm prepared for it.

By the way, I know I've been doing a lot of talking and not a lot of doing about AudioMan lately. AudioMan development has pretty much stopped for the time being. I think that rather than jump into it again a proper foundation should be laid down. Everyone has to grok what open source is about in order for it to work properly for this project, including myself. Talking it out for a week or two won't hurt much. Besides the dev box is still being used for something else so we have to wait anyway. :)