The author (and his commenters) have clearly never worked on any open source project. There is plenty of ego to be had for things like webcam drivers. Plus, if you have that webcam, it goes from non-working to working, and you can share that with everyone else in the world. Pretty fun.
Thinking about all the software I use regularly, I know pretty much all the authors. Some of them I have even met in person, and they have gotten free beer as a result.
I guess if you are outside the community, it doesn't seem very exciting, but if you are in the community, it is exciting. Kind of the opposite of high school cliques...
Can't agree with you more (except I can't buy people beer in the US...). Open source is fun! I've made tons of friends through it, participate in a podcast, and every conference I have awesome people to hang out with.
And you never know if something like that will contribute to the success of the project. It could be that a non-working webcam would be the straw that broke the camels back and sent a newb back to Windows. Lots of people have given up on linux because their hardware didn't work.
Thinking about all the software I use regularly, I know pretty much all the authors. Some of them I have even met in person, and they have gotten free beer as a result.
I guess if you are outside the community, it doesn't seem very exciting, but if you are in the community, it is exciting. Kind of the opposite of high school cliques...