Many people volunteer their time to free software projects like WordPress for moral or philosophical reasons. They feel like they “owe it” to the community, or perhaps they think free software is important from a political point of view. For these people, the sacrifice of time and effort is repaid by the feeling of having done something good. For these folks, contribution is its own reward.
But what about the WordPress professional who is not given to this kind of philosophizing? The freelancer or small business owner who works with WordPress all day long is, in one sense, extremely well positioned to contribute to the project. But the financial sacrifices of this volunteer labor – time spent contributing is, after all, time not spent on client projects – can be difficult to justify.
This talk will present a number of arguments for why WordPress professionals ought to volunteer time to the project, arguments that will focus on practical and financial considerations rather than on moral ones. I’ll argue that the WordPress contributor pool is too concentrated, in a way that has the potential to do disservice to people who specialize in WordPress at the freelance and small-business level. And I’ll outline several concrete strategies for organizing one’s contributions in such a way as to minimize financial sacrifices.