Reading 07: The Noosphere
To a degree, I think that people are driven to participate in open source largely because it gives them a sense of community. The open source community connects you with other like minded and driven individuals. Some are drawn to it because it gives a level of freedom that is harder to find in an industry job. Also, people like it because pretty much anyone can contribute in some fashion, not just a small group within a company. This allows more people to bounce new ideas from one to another, so some may find this extra creative power more appealing. Additionally, some hackers’ “behavior was motivated by a desire for peer repute” (Homesteading). The benefit that people derive by giving away their code is that they can have people from all over the world help to improve it. Additionally, “the reputation one gains in the hacker culture can spill over into the real world in economically significant ways. It can get you a better job offer, or a consulting contract, or a book deal” (Homesteading).
To me, “distributing changes to a project without the cooperation of the moderators is frowned upon” definitely rings true. This makes sense as buggy or just generally bad contributions do not just hurt your own reputation. They also “expose the owners to an unfair reputation risk” (Homesteading). I don’t think this violates the spirit of open source because open source is about collaboration and communication. People should learn together to find the solutions rather than just making assumptions of being right.
I also think that “removing a person’s name from a project history, credits, or maintainer list is absolutely not done without the person’s explicit consent” rings true. In my opinion, it is abhorrent to take credit for someone else’s work, even if you added a lot more to the original work since “doing this steals the victim’s gift to be presented as the thief’s own” (Homesteading). Even if you add a lot more stuff, the original creator should be credited for the work that they themselves did to accrue more reputation points within the community. Because reputation is so important for the open source community, I think this is a fair taboo and does not violate the spirit of open source.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the fact that “there is strong social pressure against forking projects.” In the reading, ESR mentions that “hackers often explain their antipathy to forking projects by bemoaning the wasteful duplication of work it would imply as the child products evolve on more-or-less parallel courses into the future” (Homesteading) and that “forking tends to split the co-developer community, leaving both child projects with fewer brains to use than the parent” (Homesteading). While I can understand his argument, I don’t necessarily think that forking is the worst thing. If it were, then why would sites like GitHub and GItLab, which are very popular for open-source code, include forking options? I personally think forking is probably a good thing because it allows you to take a project down another avenue without having to mess with the original project (and its owner’s desires). These avenues can sprout several new great ideas that may not be relevant to the original project owner’s intentions for their project but still prove useful. Besides, I feel like to a degree this violates the spirit of open source. Coming up with new ideas and finding other community members to help explore those ideas is what open source is about.
Personally, I do find the mechanisms and motivations of the gift economy and the role of reputation to be appealing. I take pride in the work I do, and I do like it a lot when I get recognized for what I do well. I’m not entirely convinced that participation in open source is just a means of ego satisfaction. I really believe that some are just drawn to open source because it is the biggest platform with which one can explore new ideas with others. While I just said that I do buy into the idea of reputation within open source, I don’t think that would be enough to motivate me to participate in open source. I think for me to participate, I would have to be working on something I just genuinely find interesting or would personally use. Reputation just wouldn’t be enough for me.
