6 ms·

I'm curious why any volunteers still contribute their time to Ubuntu instead of contributing to more open and meritocratic distributions.

• hollerith 15y ago
  Maybe because in addition to openness, meritocracy, democracy and equality they value other things, and they understand that insisting that all human relations be open, meritocratic, democratic or equal will hobble the pursuit of those other things. Some participants in open-source software development underestimate the costs and the disadvantages of openness, democracy, etc. They seem convinced that if everyone would just uphold those values, everything will turn out well, and they seem impervious to evidence to the contrary. It might be the case that if Canonical's designers and leaders get to boss the programmers around, then not enough programmers will continue to contribute to Ubuntu. But that is an empirical question that might turn on considerations other than openness and meritocracy. Maybe many programmers will continue to volunteer to help Ubuntu even if they understand that programmers and users do not have an equal voice in the direction of the project.