What are the advantages from a software developer's standpoint of making open source software?

I am new to the tech industry (I am in the legal department) and am wondering from a practical standpoint why a software developer would develop open source software. Any thoughts?What are the advantages from a software developer's standpoint of making open source software?It depends on the type of software and reason for its development.



The main reasons to make software open source as I see it are:



1) You can use GPL code in your project. There are an awful lot of GPL libraries out there, and can help you deliver your projects much quicker, but only if your project is open source too.



2) You're looking for outside developers to help work on the project for no charge. Problem here is that your project must be interesting for other developers to care.



3) You're targeting open source operating systems. There is a prejudice against closed source software running on linux.



4) You're after personal recognition from your peers.

What are the advantages from a software developer's standpoint of making open source software?Allows the programmer to spread the blame when something goes wrong.

Allows the programmer to quit working on the project whenever convenient.

Allows the programmer to distribute the source code to his users in lieu of real documentation.

What are the advantages from a software developer's standpoint of making open source software?Only advantage is for the community following the project to help with their thoughts and time in developing a more robust application. While this is a kind idea and all, it normally results in 1/2 par programmers writing defunct code and wasting even more time.



Also, most real professional programmers have little interest in open source, since profitability from support is no where near license rights.



Only decent thing to come from open source is web development for Linux, PHP, MySql, Apache (or LAMP)... only problem is, it's been around for years, and is just now getting good.



Robert Roati

http://www.seowebdesignworks.com

What are the advantages from a software developer's standpoint of making open source software?
Lots of open source projects originate in grad schools.



If you're a small shop or independent contractor, open source software gives you a great, free starting point for building products/services for customers.



But then you have to keep merging your changes and new versions of the open source product. So why not just submit your changes to the product...