3 ms·

> No one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl when that one asshole kid down the street just takes all of the candy out of

> No one's going to spend all day making candy and put it in the "free candy" bowl when that one asshole kid down the street just takes all of the candy out of the bowl every single day. Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Imagine someone who would keep that machine to themself, out of a sense of entitlement to make a few bucks. Any person with any sense of morality can see the obvious problem with that.

wpietri 3y ago
> Software is an infinite candy bowl. More in theory than in practice. Ask any open-source maintainer how much running a popular project is unlike putting out an infinite candy bowl and then going on with your life.
munificent 3y ago
> Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Software is not a finite candy bowl. It is also not an infinite candy bowl. It's not like physical goods at all, not even like physical goods that can be magically cloned. It's just different, entirely. The incentive and value structures around data creation and use just can't be directly mapped to physical goods. You have to look at them as they actually are and understand them directly, not by way of analogies. Why do people make software and give it out for free? Is it purely from the joy of creation? Sure, that's part of it. The desire to make the world better? Probably some of that too. Are those forces enough to explain all open source contribution? Definitely not. Here's one quick way to tell: Ask how many open source maintainers would be happy if someone else were to clone their open source project, rename it, claim that they had invented it, and have that clone completely overshadow and eradicate their original creation? If the goal was purely altruistic, the original creator wouldn't mind. More candy in the infinite candy bowl, right? But, in practice, many open source maintainers strongly oppose that. There is a strong culture of attribution in open source, largely because there is a compensation scheme built into creating free software: prestige. One of the main incentives that encourages maintainers to slave away day after day is the social cachet of being known as the cool person who made this popular thing. > Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Analogies are generally bad tools for real understanding, but let's go with this. Let's say this machine took fifty years of someone's life to invent, toiling away in obscurity. Basically, an entire working career spent only on this invention with nothing else to show for their adult life. If, at the end, no one would ever know it was you who invented it, how many people would be willing to sequester themselves in that dark laboratory and make that sacrifice?

wpietri 3y ago

> Software is an infinite candy bowl. More in theory than in practice. Ask any open-source maintainer how much running a popular project is unlike putting out an infinite candy bowl and then going on with your life.

munificent 3y ago

> Software is an infinite candy bowl. Taking candy out of the bowl does not take any candy from the person who made it. Software is not a finite candy bowl. It is also not an infinite candy bowl. It's not like physical goods at all, not even like physical goods that can be magically cloned. It's just different, entirely. The incentive and value structures around data creation and use just can't be directly mapped to physical goods. You have to look at them as they actually are and understand them directly, not by way of analogies. Why do people make software and give it out for free? Is it purely from the joy of creation? Sure, that's part of it. The desire to make the world better? Probably some of that too. Are those forces enough to explain all open source contribution? Definitely not. Here's one quick way to tell: Ask how many open source maintainers would be happy if someone else were to clone their open source project, rename it, claim that they had invented it, and have that clone completely overshadow and eradicate their original creation? If the goal was purely altruistic, the original creator wouldn't mind. More candy in the infinite candy bowl, right? But, in practice, many open source maintainers strongly oppose that. There is a strong culture of attribution in open source, largely because there is a compensation scheme built into creating free software: prestige. One of the main incentives that encourages maintainers to slave away day after day is the social cachet of being known as the cool person who made this popular thing. > Imagine if this was the physical world, and you had a machine that could end world hunger. You could copy food like you could copy and paste information on a computer. Analogies are generally bad tools for real understanding, but let's go with this. Let's say this machine took fifty years of someone's life to invent, toiling away in obscurity. Basically, an entire working career spent only on this invention with nothing else to show for their adult life. If, at the end, no one would ever know it was you who invented it, how many people would be willing to sequester themselves in that dark laboratory and make that sacrifice?