Name someone who deserves more credit than they get. And for bonus points, how to change things so they get more.
Open source programmers rarely receive the credit they deserve for their hard work and dedication to providing our communities with their support.
On January 5, 2011, Drupal 7.0 was officially released after the collaborative efforts of 1,000 developers from around the world. Drupal, an open-source web application framework, has had tremendous success over the last decade in becoming one of the most widely used frameworks on the Internet. The continued success of Drupal can be widely attributed to the dedication of the volunteer programmers; but, the question remains- How can we give credit to these individuals for their hard work?
In early 2010, the micro-payment platform Flattr was released by a small company in Sweden. Flattr was founded to help people share money, not just content. Before Flattr, the only reasonable way to donate has been to use Paypal or other systems to send money to people. The threshold for this is quite high. People would just ignore the option to send donations if it wasn’t for a really important cause.
Many open-source developers have been posting their work on Flattr.com with tremendous success. NoScript, winner of the 2006 PC World Class Award, provides extra protection to your Firefox web browser and receives micro-payments from 1477 individuals on a monthly basis. The W3C Validator which allows developers to ensure their websites meet W3C standards receives 688 micro-payments each month.
I would encourage all open-source developers to investigate Flattr. I also encourage all those individuals who benefit from open-source code to login to Flattr and support these hard-working individuals.
This topic has been provided by The Daily Post at WordPress.com as part of the Post A Day 2011 Challenge.