Every man for himself or help others out?

[monoloco]

Hello,

So I have somewhat of a conundrum. Typically I am very open to sharing and helping others out. I've always been a fan of open source, Ubuntu, Android, etc. But I have something that I have mixed feelings about and want to see what some others thoughts are.

I freelance for the local news paper and we have to caption all of our photos similar to...

Jane Doe, 25, from small town, hanging out with her friend Jack Doe, 25, from that other place, Friday, June 8, 2013, at The Candy Store in downtown Nowhere.
​

I have developed a tool that makes this downright painless and has cut my time to a quarter of what it used to take to caption my photos.

Part of me wants to share this with the other photographers. But then I have some internal conflicts. With what the current climate (thinking Sun Times), I don't want to devalue our work to the paper and give them justification to lower our already low pay. The other part is I am running a business now, I shouldn't give handouts. These aren't my co-workers since were all freelance.

I would appreciate some other perspectives.

I don't know much about ubuntu, but Android is not open source for magnanimous reasons, it is open source to promote more ad revenue for google and more demand for their other services. If you cannot monetize the tool you created, I would recommend keeping it for yourself to make you more competitive in your field.

 

[Steve5D]

I'm confused. What does the tool do?

 

[snowbear]

I'm guessing that you toss the key information (names, place, location, date) into the spreadsheet and the formula gives you the one liner output. I'd think most of the others could figure it out on their own with a little research. You could always just say "I use the cat feature of Excel" like you did here.

Or you could just say "screw it" and wear a button that says "User Hostile" like I did when I was writing COBOL at the local 9-1-1 center.

 

[runsen]

Share it once, it's gone forever.