Matt Kettler writes: > Robert - eLists wrote: > > Is it really true that in all the time spamassassin has been alive that the > > SA Team has only recv'd a hundred bucks or so in donations and such? > > I'd say that's about half true. In so far as "donation of cash or items > direct from user to developer's own pocket/home", that's probably pretty > close to true. I can't exactly confirm that, but it's quite plausible. I > don't think any team member has received any kind of substantial income. > Any who have, feel free to correct me for speculating. :) > > However, several of the SA developers have at various points in the past > been employed by companies with a commercial interest in SpamAssassin. > I'm not sure if any were directly paid to work on the OSS code, but I > suspect that was the case. (However, we're talking a LONG time ago.. > 2.32 days)
Actually, part of my job description in a previous job was to spend a certain amount of time working on the OSS code, a good bit more recently than that. ;) For what it's worth, I've heard from other projects where the "paypal button on the homepage" model hasn't worked either. In my experience, it's easier for people (and companies) to express donations in "barter" terms, than in direct monetary payment. > Also, the project itself has received a lot of hosting donations. While > this isn't of direct benefit to the developers, it does keep the project > from costing the team lots of money out-of-pocket. > > Of course, that naturally might lead folks to ask "why does the team > continue to do this?". > > Well, I can't speak for any other team members, but my small story goes > like this: > > First, scrolling back several years, I'm a software engineer, with a > part time "second hat" of running the DMZ servers (email, www, etc) and > firewalls for a small company of about 70 people. Spam and viruses are > quickly becoming a problem. In my research, I discover MailScanner, > which works with the particular AV product we have a site license for, > and SpamAssassin works with it too. The two tools collectively make my > life substantially easier. > > However, neither tool is perfect. So, I spend some of my personal time > on a PC at home creating a few rules, writing a few bits of > documentation, etc. The rules are largely motivated by my own needs. I > need SA to keep spam under control in my network, so I write rules to > improve it. While I'm at it, it costs me nothing to give a copy of that > work to the official tree, so I do. The documentation bits are mostly > humanitarian on my part, athough sometimes they bemuse me as they are > documentaries of my own bunglings through learning how SA works. (most > notably, the "Writing better rules" section of WritingRules in the wiki > has a lot of this.. Every suggestion in there is as a result of some > naive mistake I made.) Personally -- working on SpamAssassin has been some of the most enjoyable and rewarding work I've performed in my career as a software engineer. Also, it's probably paid better than any of the "closed-source" work I've done, too; there are several jobs I wouldn't have gotten, if it wasn't for the fact that I have SpamAssassin on my CV. Open source works! --j.
