If it doesn't work out we will have to cut them, but so far we trust that it's going to work out. Basically you give them the motivation that their code is going to be used by everyone, that it's going to be free, and that people are going to reuse the code. It's not just shipping a product, which is what most software companies do, and you don't know who is behind that. You are actually going to ship the source code and somebody can use the code and can change it. I get impressed when I go around places and people have read all this source code and they comment on how we did something specifically in some piece of code.
People read that stuff and reuse that stuff and learn from that stuff.
So that's also a motivating factor. Some of the companies that have to work with other programmers cull the Internet for motivated programmers, which is what we have now. I think we are in a privileged position right now. About the Author Chuck Zelade has been a computer nerd since 1975, when he decided to improve the computer games he'd been playing. He writes for Global Business Newsletter .