I've long held that open source is one of the world's biggest anarchist experiments. Anarchism, as understood by the likes of Kropotkin, largely believed that we can self organize towards working for the wellbeing of all, that s self organized groups will genuinely build useful and high quality tools.

Rather than turning open source into just another commercial effort, I'd love to explore going the other way. Why do we need to pay open source developers? They need housing, food, etc. Maybe the better answer is to figure out how to make those things freely available to open source developers.

It's possible to imagine a world where everything works like open source -- share what you have in excess, take what you need, work on something you enjoy for the betterment of all.

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Gormo 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I've long held that open source is one of the world's biggest anarchist experiments. Anarchism, as understood by the likes of Kropotkin, largely believed that we can self organize towards working for the wellbeing of all, that s self organized groups will genuinely build useful and high quality tools.

The paradox of this kind of "anarchism" is that it works really well when it isn't being consciously pursued, i.e. when the "well being of all" is an emergent effect of people pursuing their own well being locally, trying to speculate about "the well being of all" at the macro level. The moment people start trying to consciously work toward specific outcomes at the macro level, it all starts to fall apart.

So it's really more aligned with Hayek than Kropotnik: spontaneous order as a product of human action, not human design.

> Why do we need to pay open source developers? They need housing, food, etc. Maybe the better answer is to figure out how to make those things freely available to open source developers.

And that's exactly where we begin to falter. Sitting here on HN speculating about how to make the world, as a single unit of analysis, rather people at the micro level observing and replicating what actually works in practice individually, is a recipe for creating obstacles and mechanisms of centralization which will inevitably be abused.

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nixon_why69 2 days ago | parent [-]

> So it's really more aligned with Hayek than Kropotnik

Oh, God, shut the fuck up. I'm sorry for being unkind but trying to box things into predefined ideology fanclubs is the most thoughtless thing ever.

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Gormo 2 days ago | parent [-]

Well, no, there was an actual point there about trying to effect change via top-down intentionality vs. bottom-up emergence. Any alignment with a particular ideological position is necessarily downstream of that.

Consider the possibility that your own extremely intemperate response originated from a reaction to associations that you yourself were bringing into the discussion.

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nixon_why69 2 days ago | parent [-]

Apologies for the intemperate response but in my experience everyone who talks about capital-H Hayek has the same set of shrink-wrapped opinions, and the open source / free software thing doesn't fit into them very well.

The gaps between our shared reliance on unpaid open source by people doing software for love, and the "Austrian Economics" financialized worldview are really hard to bridge. Why aren't they all rich if they're so useful?

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Gormo 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Apologies for the intemperate response but in my experience everyone who talks about capital-H Hayek has the same set of shrink-wrapped opinions, and the open source / free software thing doesn't fit into them very well.

Perhaps an effect of the particular bubbles/walled gardens you inhabit? Most of the discourse involving Hayek that I've encountered involves people with a wide range of opinions, including many who see the FOSS world as a perfect example of Hayek's concept of spontaneous order.

> The gaps between our shared reliance on unpaid open source by people doing software for love, and the "Austrian Economics" financialized worldview are really hard to bridge.

Austrian economics has little to do with a "financialized worldview"; rather, it's fundamentals boil down to subjective utility as the ultimate determinant of economic value, an axiomatic baseline that preference in pursuit of subjective utility is revealed by observable behavior rather than theoretical doctrines, and recognition of the individual as the fundamental agent/unit of analysis in economics.

Perhaps you're interacting primarily with people working in the financial sphere who are invoking certain ideas from Austrian economics to rationalize their own particular intentions?

If so, a rigorous application of Bayes' Theorem to the associations you've gleaned from your particular experience may be well warranted.

The "bridge" you're seeking is right there in the recognition of subjective utility as the basis of all value: contrary to your point, it's the satisfaction of subjective motivations, regardless of how that satisfaction is quantified or denominated, that generates value.

People who are obtaining the results they desire from the efforts they invest are creating value for themselves, regardless of whether their results have a financial value attached to them.

	▲	nixon_why69 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ok, that definition of subjective utility is unfalsifiable but meanwhile in the real world we all run on money, like it or not. This is a post about open source people not getting paid, are you going to argue that their subjective utility of enjoying their work is payment enough?

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nixon_why69 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They also need a future for their children, to sock some money away for retirement and healthcare as well. These are all much more expensive.

	▲	ahhhhnoooo 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. But if we took care of everyone, we'd need less individual effort to secure futures for children. Because the community has broad responsibility for that.

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tzs a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've sometimes wondered what it would be like now if some of the big names early in open source and free software had decided to take a detour of a couple decades to work in commercial software with the goal of making as much money as possible, and then retire and use that money to endow a foundation to promote free/open source software development by paying developers.

Imagine if Stallman had gotten the IBM work instead of Gates, and now it was the Free Software Foundation with billions instead of the the Gates Foundation. With those resources their endowment would be generating enough income that they would be able to pay around 10000 programmers a year $100k plus full benefits to do free software work.

That would have meant less free software for those decades while there amassing their fortunes, but then an explosion of free software afterwards.

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whattheheckheck 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thats interesting im sure the Billionaires would love a little open source company town that takes care of everyone's needs that contribute to open source. Plays right into their network state idea