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I can't read the article because it's paywalled, so I'll respond to this comment instead. > Open Source volunteerism is the result of the early hacking culture
by bachmeier 5y ago
I can't read the article because it's paywalled, so I'll respond to this comment instead.
> Open Source volunteerism is the result of the early hacking culture
I don't agree with that take. There was not, to my knowledge, a "volunteerism" component of either early open source or early hacking culture (though my roots only go back to about the mid-80s). The "volunteer" part came later, as there was an explicit effort to emphasize open source as free as in free labor. What I used to see was openness in the sense of knowing what the code did and being able to make changes if you want. It was more of scratching your own itch and letting others play with the code if they wanted.
- FiloSottile 5y agoI agree! I think Open Source volunteerism is the result of that culture, not its embodiment. No other industry had a large portion of its R&D done by people scratching their own itch and sharing the results freely. That led to relying on that freely available work, which led to volunteerism.
- blihp 5y agoI remember the volunteerism as being a way for non-developers, who couldn't otherwise support a project, as being able to contribute to a project: write docs, triage bug reports, answer user questions etc. so that the developers could focus on the code, which usually was to scratch their own itch that others found useful. It wasn't ever really a hard sell, just an alternative way for less- or non-technical people to participate and also shut up whiners. As open source foundations started popping up all over the place hoovering up sponsorship dollars, that's when I recall the 'hard sell' of volunteerism starting (i.e. making people feel better about scratching someone else's itch for no money... what most of us call jobs and demand payment for)