Open Source Software Is Not A Democracy
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Recently this post by DHH has been making the rounds about the use of the term community around open source and the fact that these projects are not democrac...
  • azimir@lemmy.ml
    46·
    6 months ago

    It’s never claimed to be a democracy. It’s not a monolith, either. Some projects have forms of input and/or voting, most don’t because it’s just a few people writing software that they want to write.

    Get over yourself if you think that people working for free should be required to listen to you. Just as in anything else, pay them if you want a guaranteed response.

    Otherwise, recognize that the key element of Open Source is that you have the source code. If a project isn’t doing what you want then fork it and build it yourself. That’s the whole point of this community and philosophy.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      I won’t watch this clickbait

      Are you referring the title here on Lemmy (ported from YouTube), or are you referring to any video, in general, that uses this practice? If it’s the latter, why punish the creator? The need for clickbait is more of an environmental requirement for success created by YouTube. I can’t fault a creator for trying to succeed.

      forks who succeed the prior are exactly what we call democracy.

      Hm. Democracy, by definition, is rule by the majority. A smaller fork gradually becoming larger and more successful than the prior, thereby eating up a larger chunk of the market, is really more of an example of competition. The larger fork doesn’t have any say over the smaller forks. It is somewhat of an analogy to democracy, perhaps, in that people “vote with their feet” by moving to the fork that they want to succeed, but it breaks down in that you don’t have one, or the other — both can exist in tandem.

      • Reawake9179@lemmy.kde.social
        2·
        6 months ago

        I don’t click on clickbait i’m absolutely sure it’s misleading or wrong.

        If someone has a valid point, tone it way down, i don’t expect anything serious out of it.

        “Why blue isn’t a color” isn’t something i’m interested in.

        • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          I don’t click on clickbait i’m absolutely sure it’s misleading or wrong.

          Well, if you didn’t click on it, then you can’t be sure ­— it’s just a presumption.

          If someone has a valid point, tone it way down, i don’t expect anything serious out of it.

          How do you mean?

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
    13·
    6 months ago

    I love how this guy made a whole video debunking an argument I’ve never heard anyone make (that FOSS is democratic).

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Is that a bad thing? Why is it a problem that you, personally, haven’t heard the argument before?

  • adr1an@programming.dev
    71·
    6 months ago

    It’s not a representative democracy. It’s direct democracy, like anarchistic communes.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      It’s direct democracy

      Maybe some projects, but that certainly can’t be said for all open source projects. Also note that “open source” in “open source software” is simply the license that makes it so. This idea of governance is more of a project issue than a software distribution issue.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Hm, it depends on the context. Any open source project, or fork thereof would be an independent isolated instance with it’s own practices — e.g. authoritarian, anarchist, democratic, etc.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      I like your idea of “natural selection” for OSS, but I’m not sure I understand the parallel that you are drawing between democracy and natural selection. Would you mind elaborating?

      • warmaster@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 months ago

        Projects that have a big community tend to last longer. If the project does things that alienate the users, the community shrinks, thus endangering the prohect’s future. The community can mean desktop users or businesses, doesn’t matter. My point is, users have a saying, wether devs like it or not.