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   The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 03-Apr-2024 20:06:08 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

   I've been shipping open source code since before I knew there was an "official" way to do it. I published code on BBSs, mailing lists and FTP as "public domain". My main motivation to this day is that I grew up in a backwater with very little access to people or resources to help me learn, and other people publishing code was a life saver to me. This is my way of paying that back, and I figure it doesn't cost me anything since I'm going to be making it anyway. But...

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 03-Apr-2024 20:06:06 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

     in reply to

     This also explains why corporations tend to be pretty bad at being good open source community members. Humans intuitively understand the favour system - you help me out, I'll help you too if I can. But corporations fundamentally cannot recognise favours because they're impossible to value. Sometimes individuals can short-circuit that, but a large company just stops being able to participate effectively in a favour system, because there are too many processes & accounting systems in the way

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     The Seven Voyages Of Steve (sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place)'s status on Wednesday, 03-Apr-2024 20:06:07 JST The Seven Voyages Of Steve

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     ...this is not how a lot of people see open source code these days. Many people seem to expect it to be production-ready and maintained like a professional outfit, for "free". This is not the contract. It's not supposed to be a "job", even if sometimes it can be for a lucky few. It's first and foremost a community effort, usually led by one or two people who just feel like doing it. You should think of it as a favour from a stranger; and maybe one day you'll pass it on.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.