Money? What else? Fame, glory, power?
What motivates people to join a team to produce and construct something?
What specifically are people with a given skill see in contributing to benefit others indiscriminately?
FOSS may be the sole largest field where people as individuals or small teams contribute many many hours of their “free” time, for the benefit of anyone who wants to “consume” the product of their labor. Sure, there may be some philanthropic activities, community gardens, bicycle co-ops and pizza co-ops, sports, theater, … but are minor to this endless contribution of open and free code consumed by millions around the earth.
Why?
Isolated pieces of software may be a tool or an end product that is consumed, a distribution is more of an organizational structure, where all this software works and cohabitates. Both take high skills and many hours of dedicated work. It is not like writing this article where (and it is usual due to carelessness) to have grammatical, spelling, errors, long complex sentences, and sometimes not entirely complete thoughts. Software is closer to an on/off switch. It is either correct in its finest element and works, or something tiny is sentencing it useless. Software is more precise than contextual communication of thoughts, where even the worst of writers may have a good idea and people will recognize it and squeeze their imagination to the maximum to comprehend what the writer tries to convey.
Back to developers, their dos and their donts. Say I wake up today, I don’t have other commitments, I can do some coding, or since temperature is nearly perfect for light clothing, perfect spring day, not cold not hot, and I can go on a bicycle ride. I feel guilty because a serious bug was discovered in my code and people are expecting a fix, but I don’t care, I am going to go riding, invite a couple of riding buddies, maybe we can head to this nice pub/tavern as the point of return for our ride. Maybe when I get back I can feel relaxed to go seek a solution to the bug. Maybe not, and it will just have to be another day I tackle this buggy code, probably a rainy or windy one.
What if there are timetables and limits to how long others will wait for my solution in order for their work to move ahead as well. How will they impose their time restrictions on what I do? They can’t, I will do what I can “when” I can do it. There is little they have to say to change this and there is even little they can do, other than wait. This is not how paid work commitments work. Whether you like it or not, weather can be perfect all week long, you must go and sell labor at the times described by employers, or else there is NO PAY. Worse of all than NO PAY, there may be the threat and reality of NO WORK! And the weekend may come and the weather can be terrible, and Monday morning comes and the weather is all glorious again, but it is 6am and the alarm is ringing.
Aahhh… society is generally “organized” around this relationship of exchange, of submitting to this dictatorial organization called “the work place”, submit to the timetables and conditions the “paying” boss dictates, and receive this colored fibrous paper/cloth means of exchange called money. Inversely when the exchange is not defined and oriented around money, this blackmail form for survival in capitalism, “organization” is being resisted by the vast majority. “If you are not paying, you can’t tell me what to do, I will do what I want, when I want, and how I want.” Perfectly logical, isn’t it? Is it, really? So we can not, and will not, do anything hardly without the exchange for survival. But people contributing to FOSS prove that they WILL do what most people don’t, hardly ever with a direct exchange, or an immediate one.
Ok, not as simplistic and binary. There may be indirect relations to what you do in FOSS with exchange relationships with dictators in the future. One can pursue such opportunities. It is like working on a resume, or having a free exhibition of products. Look, this is a sample of what I can do. If you pay me enough I will do it for you, when, how, and in as much as you want and I can possibly produce. Just pay me adequately. And now we see a little bit less rosy and happy picture about FOSS, right? There is an underlying motive in all this, and in many cases there have been fairy tales about such success stories who lived in Southern California, or Northern, happily ever after, driving a convertible supercar around.
The name of the coding expert
One can be Enrique Villa, the other may be meansonmbitch66. Who would you hire as a software company, if both equally skillful, effective, and long term reliable supporters of their code? In the surface it appears as Enrique is very specifically trying to make a name for himself and puts himself available for hire. He sells himself better. The real name may still be Mary Jane jr., writing code as Enrique, knowing it is a sexist world out there, even in FOSS. As weird as it may sound, in some remote place in this remotely strange language, Mr Meanson Mbitchσσ may be a real name after all. Who knows? Does it make a difference, he has a site or a git under his/her control, a specific public email as contact, and if the work is highly regarded he will be offered an agreement to “exchange” work for money. Absorbed in IBC inc. selling this labor bit for profit, it doesn’t make a difference what the coder’s real name and origin is, or what their after work preferences and lifestyle can be.
Beyond the individual
What if behind the name hides a team of people producing code. Will they be offered to sell/exchange what they so skillfully contribute to a wealthier entity, such as a software or hardware corporation? Hmm… this is more complex. For a team to act as “one”, negotiate, exchange, and deal as a single entity, it requires organization. Organization requires rules. Why would individuals negotiate and abide with rules if there is nothing in exchange for this submission of rules?
Foss doesn’t exist in vacuum, it floats around the capitalist world. The dominant and usual reasoning for doing just about anything usually has economic determinants. Very common and logical. Not only do we have teams, we know and have hierarchical organizations, layers and ranks among individuals organized within them, large and small ones, some progressively deteriorating and some progressively expanding and “developing” into larger ones. Some have a history of a snow ball converting to an avalanche and some of a huge ball of snow deteriorating into dust and snow balls or golf sized ice rocks.
Still, the proposal on how people, “without” economic interests, short or long term, will join a democratic form of an organization, with specific goals, principles, and values, and withstand adversities and problems through time, and provide hope for human kind apart from the blackmail for survival market of exchanges. If there is such a thing, where is it. If there isn’t, why isn’t there one, and how can one be created. Why in FOSS if such a solution is not located soon, massive corporations will suck up all the tiny elements into their dictatorships, and most of the elements can only hope for such a thing to happen. Meanwhile there are few of us who truly and honestly, deep inside, hope this doesn’t happen, some alternative solution and goals will be embraced and adopted, and the dynamic of a downwards spiraling sucking of FOSS into the corporate sewage system, will be reversed to the point it spills out to other activities and interests within humankind. We need to keep this hope up and alive, don’t we?
Long Live FOSS
or is it
Long Remembered FOSS?
has
systemd-free linux community 
Amazing
Great post! It’s interesting to see how individuals and teams are motivated to contribute to FOSS without direct economic incentives. I’m curious, do you see any potential solutions for creating a democratic FOSS organization with specific goals and principles that doesn’t succumb to corporate takeover?
John O’Reilly
AiRiches.Online
LikeLike
I can have a proposal that relates to organization, not a corporate strategy.
When we say democratic these days we tend to think of the idea demagogues have passed and corroded the initial idea. That is less participation, representation, and basically representation through an individual’s characteristics not specific sets of values, principles, and goals. The real idea of democracy is of political equality, which should translate to equal ability to be involved in decision processes about matters we have in common.
We live in so called democracies because we vote every so X years equally. Then we have public organizations run as military, top-bottom hierarchies, where the top decides and the rest execute what higher level has mandated. Same, if not worse, corporations are similar dictatorships. So the entire life we live in, subjected to government that operates dictatorially, we work in dictatorial organizations, and many times we reproduce this dictatorial tendency any which way we can get people under our command.
How often do you hear parents explain their orders to kids as “because I said so”. There have been times that kids rationalism and arguments were solid, the orders were irrational.
The devil’s lawyer will come and say the boards of directors are democratic, but very rarely made up of equals. You can have 100 people making rational arguments in boards of directors, but if one has 50.01% he doesn’t usually have to listen to any of it. He sends a representative that oversees that his decision is well expressed and written as the board’s decision.
Between late 1800s and up to 1930s CNT in Spain organized with different principles, called “libertarian”, nothing to do with what libertarianism was promoted as in the US/UK by FBI and other agencies to diffuse what people understood as libertarianism. Basically a community of people participating in such a way in a decision process that maintains this equality. Where consensus and not vote is the aim for making a decision. Such small communities organized by similar principles can join other similar organizations and create a 1st level federation. Decisions always must stem from the bottom and what appears as the peak is really the bottom in power. A slow and elaborate process but the only (known) way democracy can exist. Values, principles, and goals, must be the 1st step to organization. Those that define and agree on those values, principles, and goals, participate. There is no sense for someone disagreeing to participate. (there have been extensive manuals proposed on how such organizations function, down to taking rounds on who keeps minutes and who brings them to the next meeting planned, and decided, by equals).
More than a million, possibly several by now, in Chiapas Mexico have lived like this for getting close to 30years, Jan 1 1994 was when they let us know they exist. EZLN was created to serve this governing body, not to rule over them. This is what you might call organization from below, not from the top. Equality, is a continuous struggle, not a mandate. It is pursued in order to maximize everyone’s freedom. Freedom is the maximum that can be attained as long as there is equality of freedom. We have been indoctrinated to think of equality as being the opposite of freedom, when in reality you can’t have any of the one without the other, or it is meaningless.
Would people under such social organization ever decide they don’t want to be equal or have this attained level of freedom anymore, and they can exchange this for “material goods”? I think it is illogical. It only happens when few get a benefit for selling everyone else out, it can’t be a rational mutual decision.
So yes, I believe under libertarian social organization there is nothing a corporation/capital can buy or sell.
PS I do admit that my political philosophy inspiration is reverse engineering of how the Zapatistas live, work, and decide. This is also bottom up process, not an ideology leading and people following, ideology following people leading 🙂 As a true dialectical materialist I can not conceive how Marxists evolved after Marx to be such idealists and against the fundamentals of materialism. Because behind any ideal a clergy of experts on the ideal is formed and none dare ever challenge the wisdom of this clergy.
PS2 I urge you to read a document on Marco’s funeral and SubCommandante’s Galeano’s birth, called “between light and shadow”. For me it says it all 🙂
LikeLike