Originally posted as a Twitter thread. We need to have a conversation about Open Source and equity. Particularly, we need to talk about how “decisions are made by those who show up” should be amended to read “decisions are made by those who can afford to show up” and what that means for our industry.
The origins of the Open Source movement are rooted in equity + distribution of power: Rather than large corporations controlling both the product, the tooling, and who gets to work on either, the user has full autonomy to create, contribute, distribute, and maintain everything.
This is built on an underlying assumption that everyone has equal ability and availability to actually take part in the Open Source community. From this stems the idea of open source software/hardware being built by the people who use it. That’s no longer true in my opinion.
When the Open Source movement began in earnest, it was a fringe movement – a pushing back against large corporations who controlled everything.
When I went to university in the late 1990s, professors and students alike said Open Source software was little more than a blip on the radar favored by academics and
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18354/on-the-corporate-takeover-of-the-cathedral-and-the-bazaar
source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/on-the-corporate-takeover-of-the-cathedral-and-the-bazaar/
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