Whoaaahhh! I think maybe you are overreacting. I highly doubt that the OP wants to force his developers to contribute to CPAN. Instead, it sounds to me more that he is trying to foster some kind of community involvement with his developers.

Making it compulsory takes out all the joy, defeats the spirit of the open-source adventure, and just plain sucks.

Well, philosophically I agree with you, it should be all about the "spirit of the open source adventure". However, for some people, a small push is needed to help to get them involved. I don't see that as "forced labor" at all, but instead as the encouragement of a boss/mentor/group leader.

There is a business side to open source that some people fail to recognize.

My company, and many of the companies I have worked for over the past few years, have all made use of open source software to some degree. Without it, our development costs/time would have been much higher, and that would directly correlate to our companies success (if it costs too much, or takes too long, no one would buy it and we would be out of business).

So in my mind, I (my career and bank account) have benefited directly from open source software and the volunteer efforts of others. My boss (and the owner of the company I work for) very much agrees with my viewpoint and allows me to spend company time on open source software. He knows that time I spend giving back to the community will ultimately benefit our business (what comes around goes around, kharma, etc).

So while it might be nice to think of the open source community as this grand adventure of community development for the greater good of mankind, devoid of all the sins of business and commerce. It is completely ignoring the pragmatic business end of things. In order for open source to survive it needs to be funded in some way, open source developers must eat too. IMO any business which makes heavy use of open source software should give back and I support the OP's idea to make that "giving back" actually part of the job.

-stvn

In reply to Re^2: Giving back to the community by stvn
in thread Giving back to the community by bprew

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