The Benefits of Giving Away Code
In 2007 I decided to start releasing a few pieces of code to the public.
At the time I was experimenting with Rails, so I released a few plugins, including one that became pretty popular. Since then, I’ve released a few more odds and ends, notably a few WordPress plugins and Premailer, a tool that helps build email newsletters.
My motivation was pretty clear in the beginning–the web had been good to me, and I wanted to do my part for other developers. But I’ve often wondered if there were other benefits to releasing code, and what they could be.
Here’s a brief of summary of what I’ve found.