And apparently not just us. I read something interesting along these lines today on a tech blog I follow (I write software in my daytime life), about a benefit CD everyone -- musicians, producers, even the cover artist -- worked on for free:
But when we moved into the "professional" realm, working with people who were getting paid and performing their tasks as part of their everyday business, we met many more problems. The printing company kept getting the fonts in the booklet wrong (it took six go-rounds to get it right); an engineer input one song at the wrong sampling rate, forcing us to remaster one of the discs at the eleventh hour.
All these problems were solved and I am quite happy with the finished project. But I wonder if it's just coincidence that all the people on the project who worked for free did their work flawlessly and we only met trouble when we worked with people for whom this was just another gig.... Do people work better when they're working for free?
(from O'Reilly Radar).
