I am brand new to the concept of Open Source. Before Wordpress I did not know what it meant to get software for free. I am a software developer by trade. I have been a software consultant for fifteen years. I make a very good living. Most years I bill close to $300,000.00 per year. My client list includes some of biggest companies in the world such as; Nike, American Express, IBM, EDS, and Citibank to name a few…
In the past few months I have developed and published several Blog’s;
I used the Bluehost.com hosting service for each of these Blogs and I used Worpress for the Blog Software. I have to say that I love Wordpress. It is incredible software with an endless amount of plug-ins and an adequate number of free themes. I like Bluehost.com because they give subscribers free access to fantastico which basically installs software like Wordpress totally automatic. With Fantastico you can have Wordpress up and running within fifteen minutes.
The point to all of this drivel is this… Once I installed Wordpress I learned how to load various themes. Each of these themes was developed by some hardworking person that decided to make life easier by providing something of use for nothing in return. Although, I am a seasoned developer, I am not a PHP guru and certainly could not build a Wordpress theme at this point. So the fact that themes have been built allows Bloggers the ability to create Blogs very quickly.
As I stated earlier, I don’t come from a open source background. My background is in Big Software for Big Companies that pay people like me big money. I say all of this because if your new to Blogging and you are using Wordpress themes and Wordpress Plug-ins I believe you should compensate the people that have helped you. If you don’t compensate them monetarily then you should at-least add a page to your site that gives props to the folks that have been nice enough to make your life easier. See my Props page…
Open source or not. If someone helps you - for the sake of fairness - pay them back!
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