What are the advantages of developing open sources?

[rurimo]

In another sense, What does open source mean for you?

Many people think that developing the open source or libraries are the less reward for our efforts.
Because it is not directly related to money or other material things.
So what the value from the open source for you?
And could you give some advice to newbie open source developers?

[mxcl]

Making open source is making products. By making open source that other people use you are demonstrating that you are more than just a programmer, that you understand how to write documentation, how to market, how to figure out how to tightly define a scope for a product that allows it to capture other people's imagination.

If your product gets relative use, it shows that you understand how to manage a community, how to deal with bug reports, how to decide what feature requests have value, that you are able to say no.

If you continue to develop your product it shows you understand versioning, and the consequences of updates to your end-users.

If your product is successful, it will open up career options for you, it certainly has for me. You can appeal for donations, and I have only recently started, and this will be a source of income, albeit, unlikely a good one.

Even if your product is not successful, it will demonstrate to employers all of the above, these are things they are looking for, and having actual things that they can look at that demonstrate those qualities is better by far than any interview questions they could ask.

And could you give some advice to newbie open source developers?

Identify something that you need. You use tools and develop software all day everyday, you have undoubtedly created something that you can open source, or at least identified something you need that doesn't yet exist. Make that, open it up and find StackOverflow questions that have the same need and pitch your product.

My brew create talk goes into this to some extent. Especially in the Q&A at the end.

[rurimo]

@mxcl
I appreciate your reply and your efforts.
Thank you!