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I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open sour

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source, to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the role played by maintainers. Chances are that they are oblivious to what happens on the other side of the table, and open source projects are abstract entities (which might as well be run by Github, or some other bureaucracy!) A useful reminder that the celebrated “hustle” is susceptible to the unintended consequences of Goodhart’s law. If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating their initiative. For all those who advocate for growth hacking techniques, or annoying ads, this is exactly how scummy most such techniques / dark patterns feel to users. I don’t think that is geographically localized in any way. As for comments trying to characterize “Indian culture”, it’s really complicated! With a population of ~1.4B people, you’ll easily get a LOT of examples for any kind of behavior (including stark polar opposites, sometimes competed to optimality). The same people writing such articles will often also turn around and write articles about the lack of entrepreneurial hustle in India and the need for more jugaad :smh:

monksy 6y ago
I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffic. (I'm not even joking.. I've done it) (Another thing.. traffic is extremely chaotic and dagerous.. lines on the road have no meaning there) Extremely poor and begging with a <5mo. They'll let it crawl around where people are walking in connaught place. (Btw go a little further to north and there is a good chance that baby was stolen [That's a thing]) Competition: Theres little to no social support from the government. Also, the families are hyper aggressive in getting their kids to succeed. This is shown in the marriages and determination of what their kids will do for work. Craftsmanship: they produce quite a lot in that country. They're also having to deal with a market that won't support luxury goods. (Ok Goa can.. but Goa isn't buying domestically for that.. they're not buying their employees Tata motors cars, they're buying Mercedes SUVs) You could never honestly convince me that they're not entrepreneurial. They are very much. There are aspects I love about it and there are parts that make me sick.
- raincom 6y ago
  > religious values that don't honor ethics Of course, false religion and immorality go hand in hand, say true religions. Here, false religion is 'Hinduism'; immorality of 'Hindus' makes them not honor ethics. Are we hearing anything new here?
- ssivark 6y ago
  Lol, your comment is one-third highly-biased projection (chaos & competition), and two-thirds pure baloney (religion/ethics, craftsmanship, and hyperbolic generalities) untethered from reality. I don’t think this deserves a point-by-point rebuttal. India is so diverse that some of the things you’ve said (the one-third that’s not baloney, but highly biased) definitely happens somewhere, but it’s a misleading summary of a country/populace. For an alternate perspective on what you consider “chaotic”, check out this short talk: https://youtu.be/xKOh9DfQBgU https://youtu.be/xKOh9DfQBgU
- gautamdivgi 6y ago
  >>> religious values that don't honor ethics Reference for this? I was raised a Hindu still am. I don't and have never condoned cheating. The religion doesn't condone cheating. I smell good ole bigotry in the comment.
  - monksy 6y ago
    I'm not hindu, nor would I claim I am. What I've read a long time ago was that there is a god in the religion that promotes that behaviour (it's not about the action of deceiving, it's if the person that was deceived is gullible enough) I'm going to have to see if I can find it again, or if this is a misunderstanding. EDIT: I can't find the original statement about the religious values. I've removed it as that I can't find anything to confirm and accept that as it was where I was wrong.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      I mean, there’s a god in the Norse religion that promotes cheating/lying/stealing as well. That doesn’t mean it’s a general value of the religion.
unishark 6y ago
> If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating their initiative. I'd say those are both very controversial examples, certainly not heroes. As for "growth hacking" and generally the ethics of programmers that appeared after the internet bubble, I wonder if one can even describe this as a purely American cultural thing. This is a field which is practically synonymous with internationality.

monksy 6y ago

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffic. (I'm not even joking.. I've done it) (Another thing.. traffic is extremely chaotic and dagerous.. lines on the road have no meaning there) Extremely poor and begging with a <5mo. They'll let it crawl around where people are walking in connaught place. (Btw go a little further to north and there is a good chance that baby was stolen [That's a thing]) Competition: Theres little to no social support from the government. Also, the families are hyper aggressive in getting their kids to succeed. This is shown in the marriages and determination of what their kids will do for work. Craftsmanship: they produce quite a lot in that country. They're also having to deal with a market that won't support luxury goods. (Ok Goa can.. but Goa isn't buying domestically for that.. they're not buying their employees Tata motors cars, they're buying Mercedes SUVs) You could never honestly convince me that they're not entrepreneurial. They are very much. There are aspects I love about it and there are parts that make me sick.

raincom 6y ago
> religious values that don't honor ethics Of course, false religion and immorality go hand in hand, say true religions. Here, false religion is 'Hinduism'; immorality of 'Hindus' makes them not honor ethics. Are we hearing anything new here?
ssivark 6y ago
Lol, your comment is one-third highly-biased projection (chaos & competition), and two-thirds pure baloney (religion/ethics, craftsmanship, and hyperbolic generalities) untethered from reality. I don’t think this deserves a point-by-point rebuttal. India is so diverse that some of the things you’ve said (the one-third that’s not baloney, but highly biased) definitely happens somewhere, but it’s a misleading summary of a country/populace. For an alternate perspective on what you consider “chaotic”, check out this short talk: https://youtu.be/xKOh9DfQBgU https://youtu.be/xKOh9DfQBgU
gautamdivgi 6y ago
>>> religious values that don't honor ethics Reference for this? I was raised a Hindu still am. I don't and have never condoned cheating. The religion doesn't condone cheating. I smell good ole bigotry in the comment.
- monksy 6y ago
  I'm not hindu, nor would I claim I am. What I've read a long time ago was that there is a god in the religion that promotes that behaviour (it's not about the action of deceiving, it's if the person that was deceived is gullible enough) I'm going to have to see if I can find it again, or if this is a misunderstanding. EDIT: I can't find the original statement about the religious values. I've removed it as that I can't find anything to confirm and accept that as it was where I was wrong.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I mean, there’s a god in the Norse religion that promotes cheating/lying/stealing as well. That doesn’t mean it’s a general value of the religion.

unishark 6y ago

> If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating their initiative. I'd say those are both very controversial examples, certainly not heroes. As for "growth hacking" and generally the ethics of programmers that appeared after the internet bubble, I wonder if one can even describe this as a purely American cultural thing. This is a field which is practically synonymous with internationality.