I’m going to use this post to keep track of interesting essays / reading materials on open-source funding, sustainability, and reputation. Please feel free to contribute more links!
Homesteading the Noosphere: I found this essay super interesting as ESR suggests that open-source contributions is driven by reputational considerations on the part of authors/maintainers, and that there are informal “ownership” rules about who deserves the credit for a project, and how that “ownership” can change hands.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/
1 Like
Money and Open Source
Has a number of observations on how open-source works in the absence of money, in the status quo
The Internet Was Built on the Free Labor of Open Source Developers. Is That Sustainable? - A look at the complicated business of funding open source software development.
A recent comprehensive article on the history of funding open-source software development. Doesn’t go into crypto funding specifically, but includes pretty much all other experiments/movements in funding up till the recent past.
Not an essay, and kinda evil, but this recent IBM patent on dev metrics could have some useful ideas.
BLOCKCHAIN FOR PROGRAM CODE CREDIT AND PROGRAMMER CONTRIBUTION IN A COLLECTIVE
So did I.
“After observing a contradiction between the official ideology defined by open-source licenses and the actual behavior of hackers, I examine the actual customs that regulate the ownership and control of open-source software. I show that they imply an underlying theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure. I then relate that to an analysis of the hacker culture as a `gift culture’ in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away. Finally, I examine the consequences of this analysis for conflict resolution in the culture, and develop some prescriptive implications.” 