David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

Together, we pool all the gifts such that someone's showing up brand new.

Just get a mountain of gifts.

This is the magic thing of open source is it increases the total sum value of what's in the comments when we all pursue our own self-interest.

So I'm building things for Rails that I need.

And you know what?

You want me to do that.

You do not want me to build things that I don't need on behalf of other people because I'll do a crap job.

I build much better software when I can evaluate the quality of that software by my own use.

I have to, I need this feature.

I'm gonna build a good version of that feature and I'm gonna build just enough just for me.

So I'm not gonna bloat it.

I'm not trying to attract a customer here.

I'm not trying to see some angle.

I'm just building what I need.

And if you go into open source with that mentality that you're building for you and everything else is a bonus,

I think you have all the ingredients to go the distance.

I think the people who burn out in open source is when they go in thinking, I'm making all these gifts.

I don't really need them myself, but I'm like hoping someone else does and maybe they'll also give me some money.

That's a losing proposition.

It never basically works.