
Roads and Bridges: the unseen labor behind our digital infrastructure [pdf] - steveklabnik
https://fordfoundcontent.blob.core.windows.net/media/2976/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure.pdf
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Animats
The first seven pages of "me, me, me" can be skipped. Then comes the important
part - that the number of people behind some major open source tools is very
small. Everybody on Github knows this - once you get past the top 50 or so
open source projects, the number of active developers is very small, often 1.
This paper just presents this for a popular audience.

It goes off in too many directions at once, though. This needs to be tightened
up to about 5-10 pages.

(At one time, Python's SSL support was maintained by a World of Warcraft
guild. They had security problems organizing raids.)

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spacemanmatt
It really flies in the face of the common assumption that someone smarter than
[present company] is in charge of [difficult domain or problem] that we solve
with a library.

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z3t4
Development time could be treated as a sunk cost, and given that open sourcing
it would improve the quality and maybe also get people working on it for free.
You should open source as much as possible. But only if you are confident
about your business plan.

The problem I think is that all the one man shops _don 't have_ a business
plan.

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sosuke
I liked the story format and hope it brings more attention to the need for
support of open source projects to folks who would otherwise not know anything
about it.

