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Keep in mind that code is not useful or economically impactful without business and community management surrounding it.

overgard 11y ago
I think that's demonstrably untrue -- open source and free software has had a massive economic and cultural impact with precious little of that originating from the involvement of business people or community leaders. (For instance, the GNU project or the linux kernel -- not to mention how many commercial products must use zlib). Business support almost always comes after the value has been created.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I would argue that free and open-source software tools have far more of an economic impact when they're used by companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc, or otherwise packaged from consumer use.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I wrote a blog post responding to this: http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open-source-software-economic-growth.html http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open...
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
A lot of code would be more economically impactful without a business community "managing" it. There's certainly a point to be made about code being channelled in good directions by excellent management. Unfortunately the median for tech management is nowhere close to excellence. It's telling there's a lot of industry sweat expended on how to avoid hiring 1X or 0.1X developers. But you'll hardly ever see an SV blog post explaining how to avoid hiring/promoting a 0.1x CEO or VP - even though they certainly exist, and their ability to destroy value is so much greater than that of a single inept developer. As for Java - Oracle isn't a very interesting company. It seems to have made most of its money running a collection of corporate patterns that work well to create profit - until they don't. It's possible the OP's post is another sign the "don't" phase is getting closer.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I wrote a blog post fleshing out my views on this -- it took a while, but it's better than an off-the-cuff response would have been: http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open-source-software-economic-growth.html http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open...

overgard 11y ago

I think that's demonstrably untrue -- open source and free software has had a massive economic and cultural impact with precious little of that originating from the involvement of business people or community leaders. (For instance, the GNU project or the linux kernel -- not to mention how many commercial products must use zlib). Business support almost always comes after the value has been created.

exolymph 11y ago
I would argue that free and open-source software tools have far more of an economic impact when they're used by companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc, or otherwise packaged from consumer use.
exolymph 11y ago
I wrote a blog post responding to this: http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open-source-software-economic-growth.html http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open...

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

A lot of code would be more economically impactful without a business community "managing" it. There's certainly a point to be made about code being channelled in good directions by excellent management. Unfortunately the median for tech management is nowhere close to excellence. It's telling there's a lot of industry sweat expended on how to avoid hiring 1X or 0.1X developers. But you'll hardly ever see an SV blog post explaining how to avoid hiring/promoting a 0.1x CEO or VP - even though they certainly exist, and their ability to destroy value is so much greater than that of a single inept developer. As for Java - Oracle isn't a very interesting company. It seems to have made most of its money running a collection of corporate patterns that work well to create profit - until they don't. It's possible the OP's post is another sign the "don't" phase is getting closer.

exolymph 11y ago
I wrote a blog post fleshing out my views on this -- it took a while, but it's better than an off-the-cuff response would have been: http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open-source-software-economic-growth.html http://sonyaellenmann.com/2016/03/middlemen-are-crucial-open...