Tim Hergert
Daniel SpiewakOne of my coworkers refers to Open Source as “the most incredible thing humanity has ever accomplished.” When he says that, he’s not making a socioeconomic or political statement, nor is he ignoring technical shortcomings. Rather, he is making an observation about how millions of people have created this immense pile of loosely coupled legos that actually all kind of fit together, without any central direction or fiat authority, with the only final arbiter being user adoption.
I think about this a lot. When he first said this to me, I felt it was a little overly rosy. After all, most decisions in OSS tend to be made by a pretty small cabal of well connected maintainers. But at the end of the day, even maintainers like Linus or Guido would mean nothing without the mandate of the users. Even the ecosystem which gives multiplicative weight and staying power… also only exists because it provides value that justifies its position.
In a real sense, OSS is one of the most democratic things humanity has ever done, while also collectively representing far and away the most complex thing it has ever created. That’s actually kind of incredible. The optimism my coworker feels is not about OSS specifically, much less its present state or economics, but about what its existence tells us about Humanity.
I find that to be a remarkable thought.
Daniel Esik@djspiewak I recently saw this metaphor ironically used for Emacs, but I think it's really about FOSS in general: it's like boys who randomly gather on a beach — without any plans, without any coordination — and build sandcastles. Sometimes, they're marvellous sandcastles.
igorette@djspiewak There is a name for this kind of indirect communication or coordination
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy
Daniel Lakeland@djspiewak
Anarchists been saying this for a century. But it hurts the powerful so they occasionally get massacred like by Stalin in the Spanish civil war.
Anarchists been saying this for a century. But it hurts the powerful so they occasionally get massacred like by Stalin in the Spanish civil war.
Irenes (many)@djspiewak yeah, absolutely :)
Emmanuel Wald@djspiewak that's why, as a non-techy person, I love and defend FLOSSs. I have no idea how it works, I never even sent a bug report, I have no idea how Git works. But they are things that people created for other people, freely, without even a central charismatic figure (50% of FLOSS-people I spoke with hate Stallman!). Even anarchist movements have central charismatic figures that serve as a bridge between them.
Willow 🏳️⚧️🏴🇵🇸@djspiewak sounds like anarchist theory in action to me.
Ecologia Digital@djspiewak
It is a #postcapitalistisland, as #markfisher said.
From: https://mato.social/@josemurilo/114745315883912492
It is a #postcapitalistisland, as #markfisher said.
From: https://mato.social/@josemurilo/114745315883912492
Ecologia Digital (@josemurilo@mato.social)
The Fediverse is a "#PostCapitalistIsland". "A Space Beyond #CapitalistRealism, as diagnosed by #MarkFisher – the pervasive belief that #capitalism is not only the dominant economic system but the only viable and imaginable one (“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”). A “postcapitalist island” is a conceptual or physical space where this stranglehold on the imagination is suspended or broken...alternatives become thinkable and lived." https://josemurilo.com/2025/06/19/mark-fishers-post-capitalist-island/
Billie Thompson 🦊@djspiewak It's not democratic, there's no voting, it's collectivist, I.e. done for the good of the community (or collective) rather than the the individual. Other examples of collectivism commonly include anarchism, communism, socialism. Not to say open source is any of those things.
It was also consciously done this way, to prevent enclosure of personal property (i.e. your pc) by companies. Open Source is the corp friendly name, but it's really the Free Software movement, free as in Libre.
Eric McCorkleThat people have organized such a staggering amount of labor, produced an even more staggering amount of value, successfully decommodifying whole industry sectors in the process, all without coercion, force, violence, or state power is really incredible.
Its very existence is a living refutation of whole philosophies, and a living affirmation of others.
@emc2 I feel like sociologists (and as you said, philosophers!) are really missing out by not studying this whole beautiful mess in real time. I have no doubt that future generations will look back on its emergence within this era with a great deal of fascination.
@djspiewak yes, definitely. Political theorists too.
João Costa@djspiewak @emc2 I can only imagine a bunch of chapters going from "XYZ started as a student project/side-project at a company/someone scratching an itch on their free time" to "things went out of hand and now XYZ powers a bunch of critical infrastructure across the world". 😄
LLVM is the iconic story there.
Billy Smith
ShadSterling@djspiewak isn’t this the only way robust large-scale systems ever work?
Beardy Star Stuff@djspiewak I'm new to the free software movement. I wish I'd investigated it 25 years ago. I've spent the past couple months exploring the 40 year history and have found it fascinating and inspiring. The core ideals of freedom and protecting the sharing that naturally comes from the democratic, creative, collaborative process, is deeply inspiring.
Humans cooperating for the common good, working in solidarity to protect and expand one another's freedoms, is us at our very best.
Leon Overweel@djspiewak I initially read it as "loosely coupled egos,” which for open source sometimes also kind of applies I guess 😂
Bram@djspiewak Your coworker might enjoy reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
plague-of-grackles 😷🍉🐈⬛@djspiewak I want to be able to refute this assertion but I find I’m not up to the task. Maybe someone else will try. Your coworker may just be right.
haui 
@djspiewak
Welcome to anarcho communism in action btw.
Welcome to anarcho communism in action btw.
jhx
levampyre@djspiewak It is incredible. See, what greatness we can achieve when we all work together.
happyborg@djspiewak
Also worth noting that this all happened without advertising, in fact it can only happen because advertising didn't get in the way of that democratising process.
People have become conditioned to see #advertising as neutral or even a useful way to fund 'free' stuff. But that's a crucial error.
My contribution being web publishing to a #p2p platform that requires a small one-off payment. So no ongoing fees, no servers to maintain etc: #AutonomiDweb
Negative Kelvin@djspiewak I remember, 10ish years ago, someone saying that this generation has no moon landing.
The response was "the Linux kernel". While I dream of humans pushing beyond the moon landing, the kernel is far more impressive and impactful.
And it's but one tiny piece of open source creations.
Light@djspiewak
>with the only final arbiter being user adoption.
Isn't this the case for any kind of product though?
It's not like proprietary software companies force people at gunpoint to use proprietary software.
>with the only final arbiter being user adoption.
Isn't this the case for any kind of product though?
It's not like proprietary software companies force people at gunpoint to use proprietary software.
Matt Palmer@light it'd be more honest if they did use a gun. Instead they use a combination of psychological manipulation (advertising, etc) and market manipulation to achieve monopoly status and deprive users of meaningful choice.
paul.7z@djspiewak and yet people still don't believe people can do stuff without a manager.
j@mastodonThat and some big boys with metal shovels making things like AOSP and the Kernel, sometimes building over what the little ones did.
tyil@djspiewak I wonder what his opinion is of free software now!
Three plus or minus five@djspiewak
I think that only sounds incredible if you believe managers contribute anything.
I don’t.
It’s ok to deputize people to resolve disputes (as happens in OSS and science) but that’s not central planning. But my firm belief is that most management is at best a necessary evil and at worst just an evil.
Marco Ivaldi@djspiewak @buherator I’d call it anarchy rather than democracy, but yeah it’s amazing
Ivan Sagalaev 
@djspiewak that is also against all the adversity of the industry that has been trying through all the 1990s and 2000s to somehow prevent OSS from being taken seriously.
dorotaC@djspiewak I think is a little rose-tinted.
Yes, there is no central authority, until there is one. Look at all the foundations creating hierarchies of projects, nation states creating rules that foundations must follow.
Look at the private businesses, governments and NGOs bankrolling developers, including myself, deciding what gets done and what doesn't.
Then you pretty quickly see that user adoption is not final.
IMO the concept of money is more impressive for legos fitting together.
@dcz Having been enmeshed in exactly that kind of situation for decades, I know exactly what you mean, and this is what led me to initially rebut my colleague a bit. However, thinking about it, the bankrolling is only effective because of the cachet established by the individual contributors, which in turn is roughly proportional to the value they've delivered to users (individual and ecosystem-wide). So in the end, the users are still the arbiters.
@djspiewak I think that's not the whole story.
Bankrolling often comes from the needs of organizations, and those can diverge from those of individuals.
I hear plenty of stories about the stupid management forcing employees to use braindead software. Or a worker monitor or DRM can be open source but it destroys value for the individual users.
Zoom out: open tracking, analytics. Even Anubis: value for the admins, negative for the users.
The levels up the hierarchy define value for this slice.
Alex Rock@djspiewak That's basically organized anarchy at its peak, and capitalists both love and hate it because they know they can exploit all its products, but at the same time they lack power to control it.