Open Sores
5 points by animesh
5 points by animesh
Suggested "rant". It really deserves that tag.
Tried hard to find a more relevant tag and settled for culture, which in fact was a filtered tag on my side.
Thousands of people contributing to the devaluation of their own labor in a race to the bottom, all in the name of the common good, fed piecemeal on petty, ego-based incentives.
Whoa, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.
Having gone through the whole article, I find no actual insight. Person got their feelings hurt by open-source people and they decided it's a waste of time for everyone because the economical incentives are stacked against it.
I don't buy it.
I once had a argument with a collaborator who believed it as a fact that nothing and no one in the world does anything out of goodness of the heart, and that there is always a self-serving or an ulterior motive. I was against that idea, but somehow could not bring up the fact that his career to a good extent was made possible due to JavaScript and Python. There is plenty of dark matter developers or even OSS-aware developers who cannot fathom why someone would make a free software product.
In light of that fact, I came across this article, and while I don't subscribe to that idea, it still resonated with me, especially in light the current situation where there is some doom with respect to license laundering story (chardet).
I stopped reading at "devaluation of their own labour"; it is clear the author cannot conceive of people who enjoy participating in a gift economy.