Why not? I know, what a cliché response right? The thing is, it really does apply. I’m going to have to make plugins, enhancements, and patches for WordPress for my customers anyway. By releasing these to the community, I can help other developers, companies, users, and even aspiring developers. So I repeat, “Why not?” Why not take the time to raise the quality of life for someone else, when it’s so easy to do. I would say to any developer that uses open source software and does not contribute, “Take stock of what you are doing, and think about the bigger picture, not of software but of humanity.”
How does Open Source raise someone’s quality of life?
It seems like an outrageous claim right? However, you don’t have to completely change someone’s life to raise the quality of it. I’m not claiming that my contributions to open source software are helping someone survive where they otherwise wouldn’t, but I do think that they make a difference.
Why have I been talking so much lately about community? Well, I truly believe that the best way to impact the world is to impact your community. I was talking to a good friend of mine not long after he returned from spending nearly two years in Uganda. Something he said to me has stuck with me. He said that after two years, he realized that no American could ever make as much of an impact in Uganda as a Ugandan could. Dave Eggers, founder of 826 Valencia gave an amazing speech at TED about his locally funded and staffed tutoring centers. He says “A bunch of happy families in a neighborhood is a happy community. A bunch of happy communities tied together is a happy city and a happy world, right?” I see the value in this. I know that I can make a difference, and I’m going to start in my community. I’m in a situation where I have more than one community. As a husband, father, friend, businessman, etc, I have a local community in Arizona. As a web developer, I’m a part of the online community. You’ll often find me helping new programmers in IRC channels, trying to empower quality community sites like Open Designs, submitting articles to resource sites like Attackr, releasing plugins free of charge, and yes, participating in open source software projects like WordPress.
