In ESR’s essays this week, he discusses the notion of ownership as it pertains to open source software, and the culture and customs of the open source community. A couple of things come to mind when thinking about the reasons one might contribute to open source software. I think the Hacker Ethic is basically essential for someone to contribute to open source. Like we read in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, the notions of free information and using all available knowledge to create more knowledge are totally reflected in the open source culture we read about this week. ESR hints at this, but I think open source culture is just the modern day hacker culture grown up, with the same values of the Homebrew Computer Club proliferating through the years just in different applications as computer science evolves.
Essentially, open source contribution is for the love of the game, and those who actually contribute positively and effectively are genius hackers in my mind. There are many reasons why one might not want to contribute to open source. The most obvious one is the lack of compensation for valuable work. I feel like for most people, it’s just unrealistic to spend the necessary time to contribute something meaningful while also working the actual job that supports their lifestyle. Another reason could be the exclusive vibe of the established open source communities. It might be difficult for a newcomer to feel comfortable (whether it’s because of imposter syndrome or something else) contributing to something already so built up.
I don’t think I would contribute to open source (if it weren’t required for this class). I’m not really invested in any piece of software like that enough to want to. Like unfortunately I think consulting is in fact my path and I just don’t see consultant and open source contributor aligning. Something that might entice me to participate is money which defeats the whole point. The “gift culture” ESR describes is awesome for people who care about their status in the software developing community. That is not my path.
The open source idea does seem to produce better software. ESR examines this idea in “The Magic Cauldron” when discussing how paying software developers affects the quality of the product. He writes, “consumers lose because, even though software is a service industry, the incentives in the factory model all work against a vendor’s offering competent service” (p. 120). He goes on to say that the factory model wants as “many buyers as possible but as few actual uses as possible” (p.120). I think this is the reason open source has been so successful. Open source, on the contrary, wants as many actual users as possible to point out bugs, fix bugs, and generally contribute so that the software is the best that it can be.
For that reason among others, I do think that the magic cauldron still has power. That power comes from the community built and powered by passion and peer recognition.
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