

Anarchism, Capitalism, Altruism : Why do I open source? - ollierattue
http://toomanytabs.com/blog/1863/anarchism-capitalism-altruism-why-do-i-open-source/

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motters
Open source is a kind of post-scarcity economy. It's an economy of attention
and status, and although money can be made in the process monetarism is
relatively unimportant in comparison to the other factors.

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sciboy
I find it hard to understand how writing open source software has a strong
value proposition for someone who isn't worried about "getting the next job"
or "looking good in front of peers". For me, I believe the best use of those
extra hours I have is to learn _entirely_ new subject areas, not writing tests
for code I don't care about, answering support or setting up documentation. I
don't care if people know what I am doing, I'm not in it for the glory or
whatnot.

Instead, over the last few years I have added two _entirely_ new subjects to
my repertoire (mathematical statistics and neuropsychology) to a level where I
can read, critique and contribute to the latest research in the field. Over
the next few years I plan on repeating this process with other subjects.
Comparing this with writing more software _about things I already know_ seems
to me to be comparing progress with diminishing returns.

If you believe I'm wrong, I'd love to know why. Convince me there's value in
opening up the 20+ projects sitting in my source control.

~~~
neutronicus
There are some obvious advantages.

If it's your project and you're the maintainer, you get periodic free testing,
enhancements, and bugfixes from your users. If you're a power user of an open
source project and need to patch it for some reason, you first of all have the
ability to do that, but secondly if you contribute it upstream your patch
becomes _someone else's problem_.

Basically it's a trade between power users, who contribute enhancements, and
project maintainers, who take on the burden of _maintaining the project_.
Usually, the project is useful to the maintainer in some way, and the
maintainer now has a better piece of software due to having open sourced it.

~~~
roel_v
"you get periodic free testing, enhancements, and bugfixes from your users"

The amount of this is miniscule, in my experience; not only that, but the
level of testing and quality of bugfixes is usually so low that it's more
efficient to not bother reading emails like that at all. I guess it's
different for bigger/other projects, although the dozens of mailing lists I've
been on over the years haven't shown many differences.

"but secondly if you contribute it upstream your patch becomes someone else's
problem"

This, too, is vastly overstated. I have contributed dozens of patches over the
years that were just left in bug trackers or tracs, or were ignored on mailing
lists - sometimes because nobody cares, sometimes because people just like to
hack on their own use cases instead of somebody else's problems, sometimes
because its against the (usually unstated) 'philosophy' of the software.

Not to be negative, there are many useful open source projects, and I use
many. But they're usually run by one or a few highly committed people.

I too have a bunch of projects in local repositories - I don't see any reason
to open them up. A bunch of projects out there with no activity for 3 years
looks quite bad too - once you start advertising your public repos, you have
to keep up on them. The trade off is usually not worth it for me (for new
projects, that is - I keep the ones I've worked on in the past on the web).

~~~
neutronicus
I agree, I was describing the best case scenario, which, however, _does
happen_. I think R, SciPy, and emacs are great examples of projects that
benefit by accruing contributions from power users.

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rvkennedy
The quote from Newton is particularly apt. Open Source contribution is a lot
like the collaborative/competitive model of scientific discourse that we've
had since the Enlightenment. While that may make it sound academic, much of
pre-20th Century science was carried out by amateurs, even by entrepreneurs.
OS the new form of something quite old and very well-proven.

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JangoSteve
I open source because I enjoy it.

Why do I enjoy it? I dunno. I think that mostly it allows me to feel karmicly
balanced. After all, it's open source technologies like Rails and jQuery that
have allowed me to quit my job and work from my own sweet office doing as I
please for the most part. Now I can give back, and maybe one day, one of my
projects will help someone else do the same.

Also, writing open source projects feels kinda like the geek's ultimate
networking tool. I came from the business side of things, and had started
getting burned out on networking events. Contributing to open source projects
helps me meet awesome like-minded developers from around the world and build
productive relationships with them.

 _You tend to get feature requests, bug reports (with a surprising low level
of accuracy) and emails of gratitude. But seldom do I receive ‘Here is patch
that allows you to d x, y, and z ‘ emails._

This has been my experience exactly, with everything from my jQuery EasyTabs
plugin, to the Remotipart gem, to the Rails jQuery UJS adapter. The
bug/feature requests always outweigh the patches-with-tests by a factor of 10
to 1. This is usually when I have to start justifying the time in my mind with
thoughts like, "it builds clout for the consultancy, just keep at it." The
good news, is even the bug reports/feature requests make me feel good that at
least people are using it.

Of course, the status and recognition are nice too. Coming from the non-coding
side originally, it's nice to feel accepted by the community.

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dualogy
Why do I open source? Because of the licenses of the (freakin awesome) libs
I'm using. Will commercialize the "add-on packages" (aka the Real Meat) later
on though...

It's still all market-driven. 12+ years ago The Ecosystem for the majority of
developers was MS-supplied. These days The Ecosystem is the open source web
stack (or -- iOS). Back when MS provided "the grooviest platform", that's what
coders built on. Now the grooviest platform is built by many indie lib coders,
the majority of whom open source. Since it would be too cumbersome to strike
individual commercial-licensing deals with them all, the path of least
resistance is open-sourcing too. Then figure out commercializing via hosting
services, support services, value-adding extra packages ... the whole
freemium.

~~~
dualogy
Also in some markets / niches, open sourcing a substantial portion of your
offering is rather beneficial for driving initial user adoption... but all
this is nothing new and I realize I'm not even relating to the core contents
of the OP here. =)

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hammock
Why do so many people think of patents and copyright as capitalism? Patents
are an artifice created by the government, distorting the natural incentives
of a free-enterprising, free-contracting capitalist marketplace. I never
understood the European brand of anarchism.

I'm genuinely interesting in understanding it, if there was anyone who wants
to explain rather than just downvote.

~~~
philwelch
The defining feature of capitalism is enforcement of private property rights.
Patents and copyrights ("intellectual property") are a type of enforced
private property right.

~~~
orblivion
Enforcing something as a property right doesn't mean it _should_ be enforced
as a property right. I think capitalism also implies that certain things
should be property but not other things. And I'm not saying here whether or
not IP in particular fits, that's a debate to be had.

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rick888
Open source is devaluing developers' salaries.

Why would a company pay an engineer with a college degree to build something,
when they can get it for free and hire a software mechanic to make changes? It
also makes it much easier to farm jobs out to countries like India and the
Philippines.

~~~
ericmoritz
because you can't get specifically what you want from a open source project
unless you own that project.

~~~
rick888
If you aren't selling it, you can. Most businesses aren't selling software.

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alex3t
Yes, why I should open source my patient management app if I sure that 99% of
nearby doctors never agree cure me for free..

