In the very early days of SourceCred, I had a chat with a senior Google executive who wanted to do just that. (Well, specifically he was thinking of using SourceCred as an input to Google’s performance process.)
I felt it would be much better to incubate SourceCred in a “pure” open-source context before engaging too much with the tech giants, so decided not to go in that direction. I could see it happening in the future! We have a lot of time between now and 2029. But for now I’m a lot more focused on open-source users.
I agree with this, but it’s also a bit tricky. I think of SourceCred as being (like money,) an intersubjective construct. It’s an attempt to measure the value that people provide in a way that is less centralized, more open to community input, more transparent, and more accountable. If it succeeds in these things, I think it will also be fairer than any of our existing systems. (Or, to be more precise: it will be fairer than other systems which are also capable of scaling to large groups of people.)
Where I get a bit hung up is, “fairness” is subjective rather than intersubjective. If a community decides on the cred, that is the cred. But if a community decides that I’m being treated fairly, and I think it’s super unfair, then in my experience it is unfair. And it’s a given that in any cred instance operating at scale, some people will feel they are being treated unfairly.
So that’s why I’m a little reticent to describe SourceCred as “fair”, even though I basically agree with your point. Perhaps I’m splitting hairs to an unnecessary degree here.
Agreed. Focusing on open source totally makes sense. I was only providing this as an example of impact it could have on traditional tech businesses.
Maybe yes I’d argue that you could say the same about many (any?) products out there: they are being built with a vision in mind but some of the users feel disconnected to that goal as their experience isn’t related to that vision at all.
One other thing that you may be interested in: in DAO articles & presentations we often give them more human-friendly titles such as “the future of work”. This connects with anyone & always gets good feedback. SourceCred is also entering that realm so that might be something you can use (for another piece if not for that one).
Not sure if this thread is still relevant, but here’s a few thoughts
This has more to do with leverage and value capture vs the dynamics of labor/capital. It’s possible to do work that has compounding returns (something where you create new assets and/or skills that build over time). It’s also possible to do work where you don’t learn or create anything new and day after day you have to do the same work over and over.
This is a feature of life. For example, this forum could be viewed as a market: sellers post ideas and buyers respond to and/or like the ideas. The more interesting/valuable the ideas the more attention, likes, and responses they will get. The “currency” is attention, but it’s still a market. The problem has been, until recently, that that’s very hard to measure.
The problem here is not the transactional mold, but that it’s hard to measure things. A “transaction” in the purest sense of the word is an exchange. We exchange value all day long.
The problem is that a lot of that value is hard to measure. As a result, we have not measured it. Things that are concrete have been measured, and as a result have accrued value. Things that are subjective have not been measured, and as a result have been “free”.
With better tools we can make better measurements. This will allow us to measure and reward all sorts of valuable contributions. Things that have previously been too subjective and/or small to “price” can now be recognized and rewarded. This will allow “markets” on ideas, attention, and conversations. Content creators (people creating posts/comments) are “selling” and content consumers (people liking posts/comments) are buyers.
In addition to expanding the set of immediate transactions that can be measured, the way we measure the assets being exchanged has room to improve. Many transactions are investments that lead to benefits later on, but are only measured at the time of exchange. This is due to the fact that measuring intangible investments over time is difficult. We’ve created financial contracts and markets tfor investments in tangible assets that are easy to measure (see paragraph above), but we did not expand that model to intangible assets. This is because the intangible assets are hard to measure, but even if we could measure them, the (historical) cost of setting up infrastructure to do so would have been prohibitive. Today we have computers, the internet, blockchains, and advanced data processing algorithms. This makes it easy and cheap for people to directly exchange value. It also makes it possible for someone to create value for another, but then receive value back in the future as that value is realized. This has many of the characteristics of a traditional capital investment: value is exchanged in the present for future expected value. The main difference here is that the set of “value” that can be measured increases, transaction costs decrease, and all value creation can result in future value for creators and is thus a type of investment.
In the context of SourceCred the, the “market” is SourceCred: a dynamic non-linear system that determines the value of content produced by the community. This value is measured and contributors are awarded Cred and Grain for their efforts. this measurement happens on an ongoing basis so the value of contributions can be “realized” throughout time rather than as a static transaction. It’s an evolution of capital markets: open ended multi-party transactions in a non-linear market.
The transactions still happen, they’re just more sophisticated.
People keep posting on it, so I think it keeps being relevant
Interesting point.
This is a feature of our present cultural context. It is not a feature of life in general, or even of human life in general. Consider Burning Man as an example of a space that is intentionally non-transactional. If you’d like to learn more, I recommend reading Debt: The First 5000 Years. It provides a bunch of intuition on how and why our current economic reality was organized, and tears to shred the myth of barter, i.e. the idea that pre-money societies were transactional.
As evidence that SourceCred is not fundamentally transactional, consider the following. I linked to David Graeber’s book just above. In a future, more sophisticated version of SourceCred, I hope that the we will have an edge to David Graber giving him some Cred for influencing my thinking. (Note to future cred historians: I would include Debt in my list of top 5-10 books that have been most relevant to me in thinking about SourceCred).
Using Google’s top definition of transaction:
an instance of buying or selling something; a business deal.
Then it’s clear that this wasn’t a transaction.
You could say “fundamentally, transaction is any exchange of value” and that David “exchanged” me value by writing the book, and I then “exchanged” him value by giving him credit. Except at the time that I got value from David’s book, it wasn’t an exchange; it was more like a gift of insight. And I’m not giving him a cred edge back because I’m exchanging Cred for his showing up and doing something useful on this forum later; I just think it’s the right thing to do.
There is a difference between reciprocal gifts and a transaction.
Pedantry
You could say that David sharing his ideas was a transaction of the value of knowledge for the value of having influenced other people, and that my recognizing David is a transaction of cred for the value of being seen as a fiar person, or some such.
You could also say that rain is a transaction of thermal energy between water vapor in a cloud and the surrounding atmosphere. At a certain point definitions become so broad as to be specious.*
I’d argue that you could say the same about many (any?) products out there: they are being built with a vision in mind but some of the users feel disconnected to that goal as their experience isn’t related to that vision at all.