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A lot of technology development happens at Google and FB and AirBnb these days because that is where the money is, so that is where the smart people go. In the

A lot of technology development happens at Google and FB and AirBnb these days because that is where the money is, so that is where the smart people go. In the previous generation they would have been at Xerox or Bell Labs. The work they do is often generic and of general interest. We should resist the idea that because the creators are sojourning in the bosom of some corporation, that corp "owns" the work. This is a key benefit of open source: we can take the freedom granted by being useful to monopoly capitalism and use it to liberate work for the public good, thus diffusing that monopoly power. In practical terms, however, this means governance has to eventually flee the bounds of its corporate origin. EDIT: Whenever I make this claim here it gets downvotes, but I've never heard anyone explain why - anyone care to explain?

luckylion 7y ago
> This is a key benefit of open source: we can take the freedom granted by being useful to monopoly capitalism and use it to liberate work for the public good, thus diffusing that monopoly power. In theory. In practice, a fork on that scale rarely happens because it would require a large part of the community to adapt, lots of supporting services to switch etc, which is unlikely to happen unless it's a major issue like "oh btw we're shutting everything down next month". Convenience keeps developers with how it's currently working, and developers are the community.
- astazangasta 7y ago
  Why does it have to fork that hard? C is used everywhere; there are ISO standards for it. UNIX also escaped the bounds of AT&T a while back as POSIX. The same could happen elsewhere also.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Why does it have to fork that hard? Because most will (sooner or later) become incompatible as goals diverge. You're right that it could happen, but I don't see it as likely, be that a programming language or a tool.
dmos62 7y ago
That's a pretty good perspective; lemons to lemonade type of reasoning. If you have a centralization of talent and money, it easily leads to monopolization and stagnation, but if you manage to sail against the wind, so to speak, and you coerce that gigantic cluster of capital into outputting open-source, interop-friendly tech, you've hijacked the monopoly machine for the common good. However, it _is_ sailing against the wind: if Google wasn't good at preserving the monopoly and we weren't bad at enforcing fair competition and regulation, we wouldn't be in this situation. By the way, what did you mean by "the corporate origin of governance"? Edit: I second the call for more discussion on this. I think parent is making a valid point that doesn't merit an off-hand rejection by downvote.
- astazangasta 7y ago
  However, as Google has learned recently to their dismay, its workers have power; they can wrest things from corporate power through their collective (or individual) action, and there may be little that they can do to resist. Sailing against the wind is annoying, but we've been doing it for thousands of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing)
sbov 7y ago
Note that Go is trademarked. C wasn't. IANAL but there probably, legally, cannot be a Go++ or Go#.
- skybrian 7y ago
  That just means you need to pick a different name.
skybrian 7y ago
The work you do at a corporation is owned by them by default. You need to arrange for releasing it as open source. (I agree that some places are generous about this, and that's great!) Also, there were some serious intellectual property disputes in the early history of Unix, which you're ignoring. Things are better now, but it's not something to be taken for granted.

luckylion 7y ago

> This is a key benefit of open source: we can take the freedom granted by being useful to monopoly capitalism and use it to liberate work for the public good, thus diffusing that monopoly power. In theory. In practice, a fork on that scale rarely happens because it would require a large part of the community to adapt, lots of supporting services to switch etc, which is unlikely to happen unless it's a major issue like "oh btw we're shutting everything down next month". Convenience keeps developers with how it's currently working, and developers are the community.

astazangasta 7y ago
Why does it have to fork that hard? C is used everywhere; there are ISO standards for it. UNIX also escaped the bounds of AT&T a while back as POSIX. The same could happen elsewhere also.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Why does it have to fork that hard? Because most will (sooner or later) become incompatible as goals diverge. You're right that it could happen, but I don't see it as likely, be that a programming language or a tool.

dmos62 7y ago

That's a pretty good perspective; lemons to lemonade type of reasoning. If you have a centralization of talent and money, it easily leads to monopolization and stagnation, but if you manage to sail against the wind, so to speak, and you coerce that gigantic cluster of capital into outputting open-source, interop-friendly tech, you've hijacked the monopoly machine for the common good. However, it _is_ sailing against the wind: if Google wasn't good at preserving the monopoly and we weren't bad at enforcing fair competition and regulation, we wouldn't be in this situation. By the way, what did you mean by "the corporate origin of governance"? Edit: I second the call for more discussion on this. I think parent is making a valid point that doesn't merit an off-hand rejection by downvote.

astazangasta 7y ago
However, as Google has learned recently to their dismay, its workers have power; they can wrest things from corporate power through their collective (or individual) action, and there may be little that they can do to resist. Sailing against the wind is annoying, but we've been doing it for thousands of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing)

sbov 7y ago

Note that Go is trademarked. C wasn't. IANAL but there probably, legally, cannot be a Go++ or Go#.

skybrian 7y ago
That just means you need to pick a different name.

skybrian 7y ago

The work you do at a corporation is owned by them by default. You need to arrange for releasing it as open source. (I agree that some places are generous about this, and that's great!) Also, there were some serious intellectual property disputes in the early history of Unix, which you're ignoring. Things are better now, but it's not something to be taken for granted.