

The Tyranny of Open - danboarder
http://satifice.com/post/the-tyranny-of-open-1

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hardwaresofton
tldr- Severely unbalanced rules and social norms govern how F/OSS software
really functions, despite there not being centralized control, there are
instead hidden forms of unbalance/control being exerted on it's participants.

This is a pretty interesting article. I think you can see some validation of
the ides in this article in different places: 'donglegate', articles (at least
in recent memory) that have have been defensive in tone about wanting to make
money from startups/software, etc.

However, I think this article goes wrong because it doesn't consider the
purest case of collaborative F/OSS software:

The case where nobody meets, and everyone is anonymous - It's much harder for
socio-normative forces to affect people if they are not interacting socially.

[EDIT] - "harder", not "easier"

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danboarder
"However, I think this article goes wrong because it doesn't consider the
purest case of collaborative F/OSS software:

The case where nobody meets, and everyone is anonymous - It's much easier for
socio-normative forces to affect people if they are not interacting socially."

I agree, and I posted a question in the article comments asking how the author
would characterize communities like Github where many users see it more as a
practical resource for teamwork and access to useful libraries, etc., rather
than a product of the idealism surrounding F/OSS (although they are certainly
connected).

