I don’t disagree with Rich Hickey a lot but this one grinds my gears:

> All social impositions associated with it, including the idea of 'community-driven-development' are part of a recently-invented mythology with little basis in how things actually work,

Open source is effectively a gift economy. And we actually talked about it being so in the late 90’s early 00’s. Gift economies are older than human civilization. This is not a recently invented thing, nor is it a mythology. They have rules about how much either party can impose upon the other.

Yes people on the receiving end of those gifts can be entitled brats. That doesn’t negate all social contract on the other side, until it escalates far beyond propriety.

Edit to add:

Rich’s sense of authority to say things like this comes not from his prowess in writing code, which is noteworthy, but from his substantial participation in that gift economy that he is negating here. That entitlement he feels to say something is how gift economies work. Those who gave more have the authority to comment on what happens next.

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bigstrat2003 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No, he's completely right on that point. There's this weird misconception in the tech community that "open source" means "you'll accept my contributions if I send them". I've seen people try to argue (in complete seriousness) that SQLite isn't open source because the developers keep contributions private.

I don't know where the mistaken conflating of "open source" and "developed by the community" comes from, but it is mistaken, and Rich was quite right to push back on it.

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chasd00 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't know where the mistaken conflating of "open source" and "developed by the community" comes from

i think people confuse github with a social network and all the extra social conventions that come with that instead of just a place to remotely host a git repository. Open source is just a license model, if no PRs were accepted, all communication ignored, and no bug fixes made globally forever an open source project would still be open source. Take the code and do what you want as long as you comply with the license, that's all open source is.

	▲	hinkley 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If you don't want your github work to be considered social, MAKE YOUR REPOSITORIES PRIVATE. 80% of my shit on github is private. And I have taken my licks on mistakes I made on the rest. I had to redo a whole release roadmap because people were rightfully pissed at me for cutting a corner. I didn't have to kiss their asses about it, I just had to say what I was going to do to prevent it from happening again. It sucked, and I am better for it.

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hinkley 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m not disagreeing that people get entitled about the gifts they think they’re bringing to someone else’s party. Yeah it’s frustrating and sometimes it’s bonkers. Don’t bring “lutefisk” to someone else’s party and expect to be celebrated as a hero.

That doesn’t absolve the host of all scrutiny in perpetuity, and that’s usually how these conversations go. This is a popularity contest and trying to have that conversation with, frankly, people who have never one a popularity contest is exhausting. But you still have to point out things to your unrepentant friend even if they don’t seem to listen.

It’s not a conflation. Open source is two things. One, a way to trick your boss into letting you keep using tools you developed here at your next job. Two, a gift economy we are all participating in. Gift economies are a community. Whether you want it to be or not, it is.

That we listen to Rich Hickey at all is almost entirely down to the latter. He has given many gifts and this entitled to a soapbox precisely because of the gifts. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Suck it up buttercup. Or, continue to act confused and indignant as people call you and people like you out for the rest of time. It’s not going to stop.

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jltsiren 4 hours ago | parent [-]

A gift economy only exists between people who agree that they are participating in one.

Gifts between equals create expectations of reciprocity. If you use open source software, you are expected to contribute. Accepting a gift without an intention to reciprocate is an admission of social inferiority. Users who don't see themselves as socially inferior to developers are not participating in the gift economy and not bound by the social contract.

	▲	hinkley 20 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Accepting a gift without an intention to reciprocate is an admission of social inferiority. I wish I'd read your response more thoroughly before responding from my phone in a parking lot. You do not understand gift economies at all. You've reduced them to transactionality, which is capitalism, and capitalism kills gift economies for fun. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a molecular biologist who is also a mother and a member of the Anishnaabe peoples. Braiding Sweetgrass is a book everyone should read, but you especially. The Serviceberry is a much shorter and denser discussion of gift economies but I doubt it's approachable for anyone who has read nothing of hers.
	▲	ragall an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> If you use open source software, you are expected to contribute. No, not in a million years.
	▲	hinkley 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No, emphatically not. We are surrounded by them and people behave as if they are without acknowledging it. Saying it isn’t so doesn’t change the fact that we give more attention to people who [give] us free shit. It’s baked into our little monkey brains.