Re: Patch committers

On ons, 2009-11-11 at 10:25 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> There is a more worrisome/sinister possibility that I didn't want to
> mention in my first email --- that companies are hiring our most
> experienced developers and having them work almost exclusively on
> company-related or closed-source projects.

I can't claim to know everyone's employment terms, but I think it's a
bit of an illusion to think that the above hasn't always happened.
Except for a handful of people who have very special job arrangements,
*everyone* is working almost exclusively on company-related or
closed-source projects. The patches that get sent in are almost always
either fallout from a customer/company project, or stuff that one of the
closed-sourced forks has developed that they don't want to maintain, or
stuff people do "at night" to make their lives easier in the distant
future. All of those things are already special arrangements that
people need to make with their employers and their lives, but they have
discernible benefits. But you can't expect a lot of people or employers
to reserve time on top of that for handholding other people's patches
and for other "community" stuff that has no easy to measure benefits.