I have a directory called “Projects” under my home dir containing a subdir for every project I’ve started to develop during the past few years. There is “AsmWarrior” – an assembly/reverse-engineering SDK, “OSFPS” – a First Person Shooter platform inspired by Half-Life engine, and a bunch of other projects that shall-not-be-named. The biggest problem for all my unfinished projects, and I guess the same goes for the most of the one-man open source projects, is that where to find the time needed for development efforts.
Almost every time “Life just gets in the way” because development is done on spare time. Sometimes I feel so frustrated when there is some relatively minor or mostly straight forward software missing from Open Source World, and I think to myself “I know how this thing can be implemented. If only I got the time to do it”. And when you finally have time to work on a project, you see all those other missing programs and you think “If only someone would develop that.. I could do it myself, but now I’m working with this other project..”
Fortunately Kesäkoodi gives me, and many others, an opportunity to develop Open Source Software as a full day job. I don’t know about the motives behind other applicants, but at least for me Kesäkoodi gives the means to scratch an itch that has been bothering my mind for too long.
P.S.
If you have been following the discussion at #kesakoodi you might have noticed that there has been quite a lot of discussion about programs that people (or at least I and Myrtti) would like to have for GNU/Linux. Myrtti even offered to provide a six-pack of beer, three bags of coffee and a pizza to whom ever implements a parental control software for Ubuntu that allows the parents to control and limit the time spent on computers by the minors. There is still over 30 hours left for all of you to send your applications! Start typing already 