< giving away code, as far as i can tell, is all about showing everyone how big your dick is. it is a competition, one upmanship. not much about sharing and caring in that practice, if you ask me. it's about how big a MAN you are for sharing. with the emphasis on "voluntary giving" and being in position to be able to do so w/o much reflexivity on how one got there. who's the 3133+ H4x0R d00d???!! :)
what else explains the why open source isn't really open source? eh?
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kelley, I really disagree with you on this. In spite of corporate propaganda to the contrary, programming is an art. Knuth's encyclopedia of algorithms is justly named _The Art of Computer Programming_, to the distress of many who prefer to think of programming as joyless engineering.
If Wyslawa Szymborska publishes her poem _Reality Demands_, is she showing how big her dick or cunt is? Isn't she hoping to share her pleasure in the poem's creation with her readers?
Or, maybe she is showing off. But so what? She has a right to.
Programming has all the elements of art, any art; a limited set of symbols that may be manipulated in an infinite number of ways, sort of like the words, sounds, and rhythms of speech, or the colors, shapes, and balance of painting.
We do not yet have programs for art's sake, so far they have to do something useful for somebody, but I can imagine the day when a program need not have any other purpose than being elegant.
I myself have written a fairly extensive program in large part to see if I could write beautiful code. And I give it away in part to show off what I did, and in part to share my pleasure in my creation. I fail completely to see what is wrong with my showing off, or sharing.
I learned programming apprentice style, by reading other programmers's code for effectiveness and elegance. Note that I did not always succeed in my attempt at elegance, but I tried.
-- John K. Taber