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I'm not sure that I agree with a single line of this article. It's like the author views their entire world through a lens of financial transactions and can't u

by n4r9 2y ago

I'm not sure that I agree with a single line of this article. It's like the author views their entire world through a lens of financial transactions and can't understand why anyone else sees it differently.

lelanthran 2y ago
> It's like the author views their entire world through a lens of financial transactions Title of the blog: Money in Transit > and can't understand why anyone else sees it differently. I didn't get that impression at all. My take is that he's simply providing a view of OSS through the lens of financial transactions.
- nextaccountic 2y ago
  > I didn't get that impression at all. My take is that he's simply providing a view of OSS through the lens of financial transactions. Which totally misses the point, since open source works as a gift economy [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
  - oblio 2y ago
    FOSS developers gift their tools, libraries, frameworks, applications, and corporations use them and then don't OSS their cloud control planes (AWS, Azure, GCP), UI frameworks (Apple), app stores (Apple, Google), etc, etc. Some give, others take. I guess that's how things work in gift economies in real life, too.
  - ellen364 2y ago
    Glad someone mentioned the gift economy. So much discussion around FOSS reminds me of ideas from gift economy. E.g. the extent to which a culture assumes a gift is part of gift exchange, with some expectation of reciprocity. Or the concept of “giving while keeping”. I think both ideas exist in copyleft licenses, but were lost in the more permissive MIT-style licenses. Sometimes I wonder if maintainers feel burned because they use more permissive licenses, which might be standard in their ecosystem, but unconsciously have a different gift culture.
- ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
  The whole article is them projecting. Worst part: > We donate to charities to feel good and elevate our status. We give freebies to our prospects to put them at ease so that they reciprocate with a purchase. We apply for internships, we put together portfolios, and agree on grueling interviews to market ourselves as potential employees.
- n4r9 2y ago
  He's doing way more than that. He's questioning the stated motivations of many OSS maintainers and pushing the line that career enhancement is the only reasonable motivation.

by n4r9 2y ago

lelanthran 2y ago

> It's like the author views their entire world through a lens of financial transactions Title of the blog: Money in Transit > and can't understand why anyone else sees it differently. I didn't get that impression at all. My take is that he's simply providing a view of OSS through the lens of financial transactions.

nextaccountic 2y ago
> I didn't get that impression at all. My take is that he's simply providing a view of OSS through the lens of financial transactions. Which totally misses the point, since open source works as a gift economy [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
- oblio 2y ago
  FOSS developers gift their tools, libraries, frameworks, applications, and corporations use them and then don't OSS their cloud control planes (AWS, Azure, GCP), UI frameworks (Apple), app stores (Apple, Google), etc, etc. Some give, others take. I guess that's how things work in gift economies in real life, too.
- ellen364 2y ago
  Glad someone mentioned the gift economy. So much discussion around FOSS reminds me of ideas from gift economy. E.g. the extent to which a culture assumes a gift is part of gift exchange, with some expectation of reciprocity. Or the concept of “giving while keeping”. I think both ideas exist in copyleft licenses, but were lost in the more permissive MIT-style licenses. Sometimes I wonder if maintainers feel burned because they use more permissive licenses, which might be standard in their ecosystem, but unconsciously have a different gift culture.
ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
The whole article is them projecting. Worst part: > We donate to charities to feel good and elevate our status. We give freebies to our prospects to put them at ease so that they reciprocate with a purchase. We apply for internships, we put together portfolios, and agree on grueling interviews to market ourselves as potential employees.
n4r9 2y ago
He's doing way more than that. He's questioning the stated motivations of many OSS maintainers and pushing the line that career enhancement is the only reasonable motivation.