[htgb]

Counterpoint: open source software, of which there are many great works without anyone being forced or pressured into making it. There are many more ways of getting motivation than applying "some pressure". Indeed, people are inherently curious and motivated, but it can easily be suppressed by environmental factors. In particular "stick and carrot"-type reward systems.

For a (much more) elaborate expansion on this, see the book Drive by Daniel H. Pink.

[jasec57322]

All this musk-style motivation 101 BS is direct from the CIA's manual on domestic espionage - frustration from within.

The means define the ends. If you treat people like shit, or as morons who need BS pressure techniques, you'll get a demoralised company.

Treat people well, set them clear targets and say it without fluff when they're slacking. If you can't tell somebody they're not good enough, you cannot help them to be good enough. None of this psychobabble BS where you're constantly second-guessing in a failed attempt to retain them on the rat-race for the rest of their life. Stop building ratrace companies.

[nonrandomstring]

> Stop building ratrace companies

They build rat-races because they are all still rats at heart. Endemic crisis of leadership and vision bred men who cannot think outside the maze. No amount of climbing extended their horizons or released them from slavery to money and the misery it brings.

[Smoosh]

> released them from slavery to money and the misery it brings

Good point. I often wonder what motivates a billionaire to keep making more money. For most it seems like ego, greed, and inability to rethink their life. I suppose they climbed so high by being relentless and not stopping. This is what makes the example of Yvon Chouinard so interesting.

[rapsey]

You are putting words in my mouth. Pressure can be as simple as a deadline.

[rapsey]

The vast majority of open source done in peoples free time is unfinished and at best of limited use. The serious projects very often have payed developers. The good ones done by unpaid developers have some pressure in terms of expectations by their community or the developers put pressure on themselves to achieve some self goal.

[mfuzzey]

You are quite right that open source done purely in free time usually takes much longer to be "finished" but that is more a question of the time available to spend on it than absence of pressure.

OSS projects that have paid developers often manage to avoid much of the pressure that occurs in closed source.

Some OSS projects like the kernel manage to harness companies as way of funding full time developers without giving them too much say in details or deadlines. A feature ships in Linux when it is ready and accepted by the maintainers and Linus not when some manager says it has to ship.

Of course this works far better for large projects that are essentially a "commons" like the kernel, less so for open source projects where most of the developers work for a single company.

[systemvoltage]

OSS projects are also prone to leadership issues and tend to have "good ol boys" clubs. It's utlimately human nature, OSS or not. See Linus Torvals or some of the things that went on in Rust community. Also, StackOverflow mods that volunteer their free time have so many issues. Wikipedia editors and Reddit moderators. Same.

Putting a OSS lipstick isn't doing any favors to understanding the human nature and how to create a good governance model to keep people happy. I suspect this is never going to be "solved", only solved in one person's views or ideological bias.

[dzhiurgis]

We barely recently got decent open source computers (but not smartphones), now try to imagine a GPL car...

That said it wouldn't it be cool have some sort of open source VW Bug. Stainless steel cyberbug, EV for the people. Low tech, curb lasts whole century, ubiquitous parts.

[randmeerkat]

> That said it wouldn't it be cool have some sort of open source VW Bug. Stainless steel cyberbug, EV for the people. Low tech, curb lasts whole century, ubiquitous parts.

AWS would just fork it, package it as a SaaS, give nothing back to the project and it would then slowly atrophy and cease to exist.