Reading 08: The Noosphere

 I believe that the main motivations for participating in open source code and content stem from a greater purpose of self, and one's own sense of community. When you have a particular subject that you are passionate about, such as a particular game or community or program, you want for it to be shown to as many people as possible and for the community to be driven forward. One of the best ways to do this without outward advertisement is to participate in the community openly. Collaboration is the key to what makes large open source projects possible to execute, and the best thing that someone can do is to participate. It follows a similar structure to fundraising, concerts, or political events, where even if you are not directly monetarily donating it still matters a lot that you cared enough to show up in person to an event. The amount that the public 'cares' about a project usually is tied to overall community impact, and the amount of people affected. If an open source project has a community of 300,000 users, that will make a lot bigger headway than one that has only 100 users. The act of contributing is a righteous thing to do, and allows for those numbers to be raised in a meaningful and healthy way. 

The list of taboos that ESR states make sense, and seem to stem from general respect and acknowledgement. It follows the practices that academic research and plagiarism rules follow, where passing off someone else's work as your own is expressly forbidden. These rules are just the foundations of the levels of respect that code authors feel like they deserve. It makes sense that if you work for hours and hours on an open source project with no expectation of monetary gain, and someone simply removes your name from the project history, that erases some of the only outward acknowledgement that is to be gained from coding in an open source environment. It just doesn't make sense to not give kudos to those who worked hard on something you enjoy, especially if it is an open source project. 

Again, the motivation to participate in an open source project stems from a sense of wanting to make something better in a community you care about. This is why I personally am going to attempt to contribute to the Melee Decompilation Project. Melee has offered me community at local events and friends that I never would have made over the years. I feel like I owe something to the community, and this hopefully will be a way that I can benefit the community. 

What can block people from wanting to participate in an open source project are time and money. Sometimes, you just don't have the available brain capacity or time allotment to be able to contribute to something with no monetary incentive. This is obvious, and an unfortunate aspect of open source development. This is why people in the Melee community, such as Fizzi, have to open Patreon pages in order to continue development of projects. In fact, it is almost an accepted standard in most open source projects for there to be a link to 'donate to development' or 'buy me a coffee'. This is a great way to mitigate a lot of the adverse monetary side effects that stem from open source development. Another way that free programs and projects are able to monetize some of their work is through slight inconveniences that can be removed by buying a 'premium' version of the product. Two examples I can think of that have messages before the program opens that can be removed by buying a premium version are WinRAR and Project64 (Nintendo 64 Emulator). I personally do not mind these, and I think that developers who work on free tools such as these (and others like Wikipedia) deserve to be able to attempt to 'keep the lights on' through donations and premium versions. Money and time are the bane of every free developers existence, and these simple monetization options are a necessary part of the open source ecosystem.