[bigstrat2003]

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.

[chasd00]

> 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]

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.

[hinkley]

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.

[jltsiren]

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.

[ragall]

> If you use open source software, you are expected to contribute.

No, not in a million years.

[hinkley]

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.

[hinkley]

> 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.

[jltsiren]

Perhaps we are talking about two different concepts called "gift economy".

The gift economy concept I'm familiar with has been used to describe various non-state polities, where people exchange gifts to maintain relationships and establish social standing. Gifts between peers are expected to be of similar value, while patrons are expected to give their clients more valuable gifts than they receive.

[hinkley]

Well you’ve got less of a capitalist filter on that than I feared but I think you’ve got the cart before the horse.

The parts that relate to open source are this: when you have riches, you share them. People making a genuine effort to reciprocate when they are able (which may be months or years from now) makes the social structure function (if you like, by the rule of large numbers - someone always has more than they need when others do not).

If you do share in kind, your social status is unaffected by this aspect of your culture. If you are consistently more generous, your status increases. Call it Bayesian if you like. He helped us in the past, he will help us again in the future, so let’s keep him safe.

If you’ve ever been nominated as a maintainer on someone else’s project, this is usually why. You’re one of the top contributors not already on the core team, and they either like you a lot, or the contributions from others have fallen off and even they know this is not sustainable, and you’re the next best option.

There is an element of gifts given to strangers, which I’m claiming should also show up in how you receive “visitors” to your project, but I think outside of fiction this is typically set at a best effort level. It’s acceptable to set it at the “decency” level discussed elsewhere in this thread. But a lot of people don’t and then yell back when people scold them for it.