Craig Hockenberry on Chameleon

Craig Hockenberry: “In summary, weâ€ re very disappointed with how things have turned out. Not because of the funding, but because thereâ€ s some potential here that will never be realized. Weâ€ ll continue to add things we need for our own products, but donâ€ t expect to see any documentation or bug fixes that donâ€ t affect our own code. Any changes or fixes will get pushed out to the community on a schedule that suits us best: probably at the end of minor release cycles (every few months.)”

If you’re an iOS developer you probably know who Craig Hockenberry is, he’s the guy that created Twitterrific. Anywho, he’s also a Principal at Iconfactory. I guess my point is the guy has been developing software for a very long time and is well respected. I do find it odd that he’s a bit disappointed in the response to Chameleon. I’m not sure what was expected? Open Source is by nature fickle. What I see is this; people will download it, use it, gripe about bugs, but do nothing beyond that. Sure, there will be diehards that get behind it and contribute, but mostly people will just pull the source down, build, and use it. That’s the way it goes in the Open Source community. I have a couple of Open Source things, granted they’re nothing special, and I doubt anyone has used them, but I never expected anyone to contribute to them, or give me money to support them. I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful person, but I don’t think you should expect to receive any money for an Open Source project. It’s icing on the cake if you could raise money to support it, but I wouldn’t expect it.

Anyway, if you’re an iOS or Mac developer you should take a look at Chameleon, and support it in any way you can, the fine folks at the Iconfactory put a lot of time and money into it.

You can donate to the effort right from the homepage.