Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Asparouhova

genuine conflict between wanting to encourage newcomers to participate in open source and feeling unable to personally take on that work. Maintainers simply don’t have the energy to onboard every person who shows passing interest.

One study found that in more than 85% of the open source projects the researchers examined on GitHub, less than 5% of developers were responsible for over 95% of code and social interactions.

According to Levy’s portrait, hackers care about improving the world, but don’t believe in following the rules to get there.

Eric S. Raymond (also known as ESR), the programmer who helped rebrand free software to “open source” in the 1990s, is widely viewed as early open source’s unofficial anthropologist.

His 1997 book-length essay, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary,” makes a compelling case for the benefits of open source software.

It absolutely sickens me to encounter users who seem to be incapable of using git without a proprietary communications tool.29

While the MIT license is credited with making the distribution of open source code frictionless, its “set it and forget it” approach has also been criticized for driving the wedge between open source code and its ideological origins.

By contrast, today’s generation of open source developers needs GitHub to do their best work. Just as there are Instagram influencers and Twitch streamers, there are GitHub developers.

Software licences regulate distribution, but cannot regulate production. . . . This is also the main challenge of whatever comes after open source.40

I’m not a “member” of these projects – I’m just a “user,” and contributing a little is a part of being a user.