[froh]

the essay misses out on the undeniable benefit of uninterrupted work, and it doesn't mention digital similes to the water-cooler, like chat rooms and decent mailing list support. group conversations with little visual noise, like old fashioned irc, like old fashioned mailing lists, are what distributed FOSS engineering communities thrive on.

so the article sees what is missing in remote work, but it's not spelling out what is gained: quiet uninterrupted focus time, with higher productivity.

edit: of course the FOSS community benefits greatly from occasional conferences to work on topics that benefit from a whiteboard, from being in the same room, from humming. and likewise workplace collaboration benefits from occasional deliberate face to face workshops, e.g. to sort out challenging allignment topics