I don’t know have enough experience in the field to comment on the work of commercial programmers or non-open source developers, though I’ll give it more thought and see if I can pull something worth discussing.

And yeah, I thought about what level of connection exists between non-profits and open-source projects as I wrote that comment.

My feeling is that people working for commercial enterprises (ie., non-open source) are not programming at all, they are working with commercial products developed for the Microsoft or Apple environments.

People who do commercial programming almost by definition cannot be involved in re-inventing the wheel, because the wheel is seen as someone else’s intellectual property, and hence is probably patented.

I know where Yelvington is coming from, and I have even participated in the ‘reinventing the wheel’ syndrome myself. It is not all bad; it’s how I learned how databases and CMSs are built. But its impact is, I believe, overstated.

As for the reuse of content by journalists, it seems to me that most journalists see themselves constrained by the same factors as commercial programmers. Even if appropriate content exists, reuse is much more of a problem because of IP considerations. You can’t just borrow large chunks of someone else’s work, even if you give them credit.

So insofar as a hammer is being used, I’m not sure it is appropriate journalists are the appropriate targets. Their publishers, who continue to perpetuate the system of intellectual property, might be more deserving.

Also, do you think the type of programmers drawn to open-source / non-profit work might be different than the ones with jobs at for-profits?