I think part of the issue with the discourse is that open source is so complicated, so politicized from the beginning, so incredibly varied across projects.
Open source is pretty abstract, and therefore, arguments can often devolve to two sides making straw man points. It's easy to argue against the most extreme ideas on each side of certain debates.
As I ventured to become more familiar with open source I found that there was so much nuance that people attempted to label as the definitive answer. It seemed like people had claimed to have "solved" certain open source dilemmas which, to me, seem more like ongoing economic tradeoffs which can never be solved.
In your post, and in my reply, it's all very philosophical and I wouldn't want to think that anyone in this conversation "nailed it" with their argument. We're all just holding court and chatting.
Michael MacTaggert is a software developer looking for work, host of a law review podcast called Amicus Lectio, and a moderator of Programming Discussions (invite.progdisc.club). Follow me on Twitter!
It's definitely one of those subjects about which discussion tenaciously runs away to abstractions. :) That's good, in the sense that open source ideas are versatile and can be a lens on many things, but it also allows people to argue past concrete details and criticisms by appealing to higher principles. I tried to balance that by including both the more heady origins for it in corporation-driven changes to the copyright law and also the concrete ways in which corporations risk their operations and make the industry less healthy by failing to support these groups they depend on.
However, the result does also feel like two articles merged into one to me, and thereby more of an abstraction, haha.
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I think part of the issue with the discourse is that open source is so complicated, so politicized from the beginning, so incredibly varied across projects.
Open source is pretty abstract, and therefore, arguments can often devolve to two sides making straw man points. It's easy to argue against the most extreme ideas on each side of certain debates.
As I ventured to become more familiar with open source I found that there was so much nuance that people attempted to label as the definitive answer. It seemed like people had claimed to have "solved" certain open source dilemmas which, to me, seem more like ongoing economic tradeoffs which can never be solved.
In your post, and in my reply, it's all very philosophical and I wouldn't want to think that anyone in this conversation "nailed it" with their argument. We're all just holding court and chatting.
It's definitely one of those subjects about which discussion tenaciously runs away to abstractions. :) That's good, in the sense that open source ideas are versatile and can be a lens on many things, but it also allows people to argue past concrete details and criticisms by appealing to higher principles. I tried to balance that by including both the more heady origins for it in corporation-driven changes to the copyright law and also the concrete ways in which corporations risk their operations and make the industry less healthy by failing to support these groups they depend on.
However, the result does also feel like two articles merged into one to me, and thereby more of an abstraction, haha.