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   Pelle Wessman (voxpelli@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 14-Oct-2024 01:46:13 JST Pelle Wessman

   Conway's law applied to open source projects is an interesting exercise when they become professionalized:

   They go from collaborative dog fooding that solves the needs of the individual contributors – the producers and consumers are one – “prosumers”

   Instead they become projects that’s maintained for someone else – the prosumer and the dog fooding is replaced with customers, users and producers (some consumers donate, “customers”, others simply use it, “users”)

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     Pelle Wessman (voxpelli@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 14-Oct-2024 01:46:12 JST Pelle Wessman

     in reply to

     Does sustainable open source means more professional maintainers or does it mean more paid time for maintenance?

     I think the true revolution comes when every developer is encouraged and empowered to collaborate with the wider world.

     We need the contribution of the masses, not the professionalisation of the few.

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     Pelle Wessman (voxpelli@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 14-Oct-2024 01:46:13 JST Pelle Wessman

     in reply to

     Conway’s law states that a system design will mimic its organization structure: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

     What happens when a project moves from a being a byproduct of collaboration and dog fooding to become its own purpose?

     Will they lose the very character that gave open source projects the magic that they wield?

     Will they become yet another product made with money as its purpose rather than being built as part of real world use cases?

     Important aspect when we strive to make OSS sustainable

     Tim Chambers repeated this.