Live data from Hacker News

The perils of mixing open source and money

david.heinemeierhansson.com

51–53 of 53 posts

Re: The perils of mixing open source and money

#51

I've made the same argument before as well. Also thinking of the great overview of market/social norms in Predictably Irrational. It consistently gets ignored when talking about trying to inject money into open source. Now I read a well written article on HN about exactly the question of how to encourage open source without ruining the exact thing that makes it work and think "Hey, there will be at least a bit of an…

Yes, this is a complex subject. I like to cite the Venus Project in these cases, but while it provides a seemingly simple solution, reaching such a situation will be very complicated both for ideologies to fight, interests to overcome, knowledge to be gained, etc. A citizen revenue seems to be the easiest first step in this direction. You could think of it as a generalized kickstarter project, without the potential d…

"The Venus Project is an organization started by self-educated structural engineer, industrial designer, and futurist Jacque Fresco. Fresco's project aims to restructure society through worldwide utilization of a theoretical design that he calls a resource-based economy. Those ideas use a version of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation with a global socio-economic system based on social cooperation and scientific methodology."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project

Re: The perils of mixing open source and money

#52
He talked about inter-project conflicts due to injecting money into the system, but I think the intra-project issues are the bigger problem. Suppose the head developer receives $10^n for fund raising. Does this encourage or discourage other potential contributors from working with the developer? We've mainly been participating in a gift economy: You've given to me; I'm happy to give back to you. However, if I've got a big feature that I can contribute to this newly funded project, might I hold back since I'm not going to get a cut of any of these funds? The problem seems exacerbated as the funds grow larger.
Post reply on HN