http://www.understated.co.uk/blog/2007/be-a-marketer-not-a-town-crier/
There are five broad types of marketer in the open source world:
- Town criers: shout loudly but not always clearly, don’t listen, make a big noise but actually only reach a tiny number of people.
- Frustrated philosophers: so interested in the academic niceties of marketing that they mostly fail to communicate with anyone.
- Secondary practitioners: they fell into marketing-like practices by doing something else and probably wouldn’t think of what they do as marketing.
- Professional visitors: one of the small but growing group of professional marketers employed by open source software companies, for whom open source is just another job. Further divided into those that engage with the community and those that don’t.
- The people that get it: they know the difference between free software and open source, they’re a part of the community and they know marketing.
I think I'm in Secondary Practitioner class (maybe a little bit the professional marketer class). Most of my opensource contributions/promotion are voluntary, but I took it like something that I pay back to the community for the Freedom they granted me (somehow like an obligation/job) .. I don't believe on totally free... theres always a price for something , make it in term of monetary, efforts, obligation etc ..
Freedom has a very high price, that is responsibility
Anonymous@Internet
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw
And that applies to all subjects in life, not only in opensource/softwares.
p/s: too many town criers around sometimes causes a great headache :P