The reason why - DevLog #006

Is it possible

that I'm silly? What's the reason for me to spend most of my free time working on an open-source project like NumeRe? I'm not kidding---that's a serious question, because from an objective, financial viewpoint there's really no reason to do so. I mean, of course I'm learning interesting stuff during my coding sessions, but I also could have done so by programming some commercial application. And, in fact, if I would work for a company, which would sell self-coded applications, I would most probably not work on this project, although the reason is different: after 8 hours of programming, I'm simply exhausted and neither able to produce some reasonable code nor even think of possible solutions.

Well, the question stil persist: why am I doing this? Is it possible that I'm simply bored at work during the day times and need some sort of compensation? Certainly not---I really like my daytime job, because it's challenging everyday. Is it possible that I'm bored at home? Of course not! My wife and my cat (Every physicist should have a cat!) are very demanding and they don't like (however accept) when I'm spending hours in front of my computer inspecting code and smashing bugs.

The actual reason is most probably that I like the concept of open source software, because I can look at it, if I don't understand, what it's doing. I like the idea of being able to modify every software, to add or remove features. My major competitor is probably also one reason, why I code an application: I dislike many design decisions being done in this software and I want to build an application, which outclasses it in these aspects.

TLDR: I'm developing NumeRe, because I like the concept of open source software and I dislike silly, expensive closed source.