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Nicholas Zakas Illustrates ‘Free as In Puppy’

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This is a true story that isn’t about open source but makes sense in the context of open source. I repeat, this is a 100% true story that isn’t about open source but gives a good idea about what it’s like to maintain an open source project. Ready? Here we go.

—@slicknet on

There’s the concept of “free as in puppy”1 which boils down to how open source isn’t necessarily cheap to maintain contributed code since much like a puppy, you need to take care of it2.

Here Nicholas illustrates the concept with a personal example

  1. An offshoot of “free as in speech” and “free as in beer” ↩︎

  2. This past year my dogs had so many health issues which couldn’t necessarily be solved by donating them. ↩︎