readme file, etc. Among them, it is hard to make the case for open software because it will get better, faster. No, no, it is far easier to tell them that it is "the" Right Thing. A moral argument, to introduce them; it's mean to hide the stuff from others, not to help. The only thing for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Then comes the pragmatism: it is easier to get known if your code is open, even those who will seek to do you harm will know who did the real work, others will work on the code and improve. While this argument usually good for people with a healthy ego (my code will call attention, my code will be used) or who are scratching their own itch (someone might help me get this done faster so I can scratch my itch faster and more fully), when people are coding for someone else the "right" and "good" versus "wrong" and "evil" works. I don't like leaving people in half, so I usually point them to your "How to be a hacker" essay, and CatB... but by then they are already doing the right thing for good reasons. I live in a town that had a basically private fire department back in the day. You know what happened? It burnt down. The whole thing. You know why there wasn't a private fire department? Because there wasn't enough money in the town to afford one. Do