Let’s suppose that despite all the positive changes and having a book nearby, Mel feels she needs a face to face guidance. She asks around her workplace, and discovers a fellow worker, by the name of Rachel Southern ( actually a character in a story I’m writing who fits perfectly here) is a first-class perl guru. Rachel has been programming since she was 14, knows UNIX, Perl and many other languages well, and is a very nice, sociable person. So Mel asks Rachel if she can tutor her in Perl.

Rachel, however, being the expert that she is, is busy with work, and prefers to spend her weekends relaxing, socializing (online and in real life), and hacking on open-source projects. Moreover, she lives very far from Mel’s apartment. So she tells Mel that if she wishes to go to Mel’s apartment on a Saturday or a Sunday, and tutor her with Perl (or UNIX in general), Mel would have to pay her a substantial amount of money per hour. Mel accepts, as she realizes the help she’ll get out of Rachel, will help her in her work, which in turn will be very well worth the money.

Was Rachel “greedy” or “unfriendly” in asking for money? No. I was told a technician in Israel charges $50 an hour. Many lawyers and other professionals will charge much more. The time of competent persons is the most precious resource on our planet (except perhaps for human rationality), and Rachel has no selfish interest to spend so much time helping Melissa.

I was criticizing the fact that books costed money and were not available online only because the reproduction of books in Electronic form is zero. But a time a person spends helping another one is priceless. Now, if Mel lived in the same block as Rachel, or otherwise they were very good friends, then Rachel could have chosen to reject the payment. (My friend and I lost track of how even we are regarding the pizzas we ate and we could not care less about this fact).

It is true that Richard Stallman (RMS) travels around the world visiting various free software user groups, at the cost of the travelling expenses alone. He have also consistently answered the E-mails of me and everyone else I know, and is available by phone most of the time. However, Stallman’s purpose in life is propagating free software and he is the spiritual father of the free software and open source movement. As such, he accepts the fact that he has become a saint and does not charge money for that. As he once told me and some other IGLU’ers: “Advocacy is everything I do”.

Most of us, however, are trying to make the best use of our time, including getting the bills paid or contributing to free software. As such, our time is precious enough so a substantial amount of it that is used to help a less capable peer will cost money. It does not mean that spending some time for writing a straightforward ten-liner for someone should, though. (in that case, there’s usually no way to acquire the money in the first place)

There’s a limit to anything. I remember that once I hanged on the IRC, and someone there showed me a bot he or his clique wrote in mIRC-script and wanted to convert to Perl. The bot was a bit complex, so I told him I did not want to convert it, as I had no selfish interest in getting it ported. I suggested him to learn Perl and do the porting himself. He understood. I’m not sure the bot was ever ported, but the gods help only those that help themselves.