Bringing our focus back to how open source gets produced, given the dramatic increase in consumption.
From a Linux Conf Australia keynote, January 19 2017. (Video of talk: https://youtu.be/W2AR1owg0ao)
Note: this deck is slightly slimmed down from the one I used in my talk, for easier readability.
FOOTNOTES:
Slides 2, 5, 6, 9, 10: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html
Slide 12: Arrow by Cengiz SARI, via https://thenounproject.com/
Slide 13: Netscape source: The Success of Open Source. Lodash source: https://www.npmjs.com/package/lodash
Slide 14: SourceForge source: Success of Open Source. GitHub source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub#cite_note-6
Slide 15: https://peerj.com/preprints/1233.pdf
Slide 21: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/12/30/1611249/open-source-roles-starters-vs-maintainers
Slides 24 & 44: The Success of Open Source
Slide 25: https://medium.com/the-javascript-collection/healthy-open-source-967fa8be7951#.yl06kb15p
Slide 26: https://twitter.com/sindresorhus/status/806937150575017984
Slide 27: https://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=6296
Slide 30: https://medium.com/@thejameskyle/dear-javascript-7e14ffcae36c#.p9ee02mjw
Slide 31: https://twitter.com/b0neskull/status/820850697390333952
Slide 34: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/09/22/gpl3.html
Slide 36: https://www.debian.org/social_contract
Slide 37: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2918
Slide 38: https://opensource.org/about
Slide 40: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en
5. @nayafia
“Is it alright to boil a sentient creature
alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”
- DFW
6. @nayafia
“Is it alright to boil a sentient creature
alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”
- DFW
(“Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental?”)
7. @nayafia
Is it alright if a project struggles or dies
because the maintainer can’t keep up
with it anymore?
8. @nayafia
Is it alright to compromise, or even deliberately
ignore, the happiness of maintainers so we that
can enjoy free and open source software?
23. @nayafia
1% of people create the content that
99% consume
100% of maintainers are expected to
respond to every issue
24. @nayafia
“Rapid evolution poses the risk of overwhelming
the system...thus introducing errors more
quickly than the system can fix them.”
Steven Weber,
The Success of Open Source
27. @nayafia
“Every developer (unless they’re lucky) has
looked at page after page of open issues
and wondered why they’re the only person
working on any solutions to them.”
Jonathan Zdziarski,
“On the State of Open Source”
34. @nayafia
“Our goal should be to spread freedom and
then defend it. That is more important than
making our software popular, which would
just be catering to our egos.”
Richard Stallman,
“The GNU GPL is Here to Stay”
36. @nayafia
Debian Social Contract
● Debian will remain 100% free
● We will give back to the free software community
● We will not hide problems
● Our priorities are our users and free software (“We will be guided
by the needs of our users and the free software community. We
will place their interests first in our priorities.”)
● Works that do not meet our free software standards
37. @nayafia
“The implication of [the ‘Open Source’] label is
that we intend to convince the corporate
world to adopt our way for economic,
self-interested, non-ideological reasons.”
Eric Raymond,
“Open Source Summit”
38. @nayafia
“The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a
non-profit...formed to educate about and advocate
for the benefits of open source and to build bridges
among different constituencies in the open source
community.”
40. @nayafia
The four freedoms of free software
● The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose
● The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so
it does your computing as you wish
● The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor
● The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to
others
41. @nayafia
The four freedoms of open source producers
● The freedom to decide who participates in your community
● The freedom to say no to contributions or requests
● The freedom to define the priorities and policies of the project
● The freedom to step down or move on from a project,
temporarily or permanently
42. @nayafia
Other things maintainers need help with:
1. Community best practices
2. Project analytics
3. Tools and bots
4. Conveying support status
5. Finding funding
6. Existential qs
44. @nayafia
“What is clearly missing from [Eric Raymond’s]
statement, and is ultimately as important, is
how those eyeballs are organized.”
Steven Weber,
The Success of Open Source
