Boredom Drives Open-Source Developers?

Henry McClyde writes "Chris Anderson of The Long Tail posted an article yesterday in which he claims that "spare cycles" — or boredom and the tons of people who wish they had something better to do — is what drives Web 2.0.... and the open source development community. While Web 2.0 in general is driven by "the long tail," NeoSmart seems to have taken up issue with Anderson's claims that open source developers (and other freeware programmers in general) do what they do because they're bored and have nothing better to spend their time on. Same with Wikipedia contributors, and bloggers in general."

352 webcam drivers?

[gEvil (beta)]

325 webcam drivers anyone? [slashdot.org] I mean, what else other than boredom would prompt someone to write 523 webcam drivers?

Slashdot is on another scale

[DrYak]

Slashdot is playing the gamt at an entirely different order of magnitude.

A couple of spare cycle is what you need to build Linux.
On the same scale, the amount of time wasted on /. should leed us to find a cure for cancer.

What?

[packetmon]

You know... I was bored and decided to read this article then got an idea... Instead of wasting my life read /., what I should be doing is writing code....

wget -qO - http://www.infiltrated.net/slashdot|\
ruby -lne 'puts STDIN.readlines.reverse!.slice(0,2).reverse!;#suck er'|\
perl -p -e 's/[0-9]//g;s/X/ /g'|\
ruby -pe '$_ = $_.chomp + " " + gets if $. % 2'

Re:352 webcam drivers?

[WrongSizeGlass]

I mean, what else other than boredom would prompt someone to write 523 webcam drivers?

Just a wild guess, but perhaps interest in the fair lass who's window is across the way from your own + a disdain for Windows?

Re:girlfriends and OSS

[danbert8]

HAHAHA, like we believe that. Let me give you a slashdot translation lesson:
 
Post says, "I recently got a girlfriend". Post means "I recently found a porn magazine".
Post says, "I was about to start an open source project". Post means "I was using an open source program and I thought it was decent so I considered writing a MAN page for it".
 
Lesson 1 completed. Tomorrow's lesson, how to talk to a n00b.

Re:Wrong

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I would say that slashdot stand to boredom as a black hole stands to matter. So highly concentrated it distorts reality.

Boredom

[Rovastar]

Often boredom leads to half finsihed blog entries, projects and p

I need my coffee

[MechaShiva]

Totally read that headline wrong. I was wondering what the hell a boredom drive was and why they would open source their developers and not the drivers. Damnit, now my brain hurts.

Re:girlfriends and OSS

[Paulrothrock]

Just wait till you have a wife. I try writing my own stuff and I never have the time to. I actually have stuff to do at work, so I can't work on anything there, and when I go home my wife insists that I "spend time" with her. And, apparently, tapping away at my Powerbook while she watches TV doesn't count.

I'm hopeful that once we have a kid I'll be relegated to the role of grocery courier and she'll have someone else to bother all the time. But I'm not going to hold my breath. (First kid's due in October.)

Obesity

[Anonymous Coward]

"In other words you don't get tributes to Zeus until there is a surplus of food lying around that the peasants won't mind parting with. "

In other words: Fat people are working towards an atheist society.

*grabs another snack*

Re:Wrong

[pragma_x]

I disagree.

Take me for example: I'm so busy I can't even post right now.

Re:Maybe for some...

[SadGeekHermit]

You sound like one of those people who, back in high school, complained about the "smart kids" because they were always "getting attention" from the teacher. I suppose you think the correct lifestyle is one in which you are completely invisible, do nothing with your life, and vanish into obscurity and the corner bar.

I think you're lost. This is Slashdot. The sports pages are over there.

Re:352 webcam drivers?

[kabocox]

325 webcam drivers anyone? [slashdot.org] I mean, what else other than boredom would prompt someone to write 325 webcam drivers?

325 possibly hot chicks waiting for web cam drivers ...

Re:Slashdot is on another scale

[Drooling Iguana]

Slashdot already greatly impedes one of the most common vectors for the spread of HIV.