Re: ESR - the magic cauldron

[Ranjit Mathew <rmathew at hotmail dot com>]

Frank Schruefer wrote:
>>The real free-rider problems in open-source software are more a function of friction
>>costs in submitting patches than anything else. A potential contributor with little
>>stake in the cultural reputation game (see [HtN] ) may, in the absence of money
>>compensation, think ``It's not worth submitting this fix because I'll have to clean
>>up the patch, write a ChangeLog entry, and sign the FSF assignment papers...''. It's
>>for this reason that the number of contributors (and, at second order, the success
>>of) projects is strongly and inversely correlated with the number of hoops each
>>project makes a user go through to contribute. Such friction costs may be political
> 
> 
> And don't forget these guys like me who'd like to contribute but never
> get told where to obtain these f** papers.

That's easy to fix - see the latter half of this message
for example:

    http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2002-06/msg01018.html

For the "program", you can write "GCJ".

You'll get a snail-mail form after this which you should
carefully read and sign and send it back to FSF if you
find it acceptable.

Ranjit.

-- 
Ranjit Mathew          Email: rmathew AT hotmail DOT com

Bangalore, INDIA.      Web: http://ranjitmathew.tripod.com/