[iDC] Introduction: The Internet as Playground and Factory

[Zbigniew Lukasiak]

Hi,

I am a programmer involved in the practice of FLOSS.  I got interested
by your email from two points - first politics in FLOSS, second
fragmentation of the web politics.  You write that FLOSS has not
fallen for it - maybe relatively this can be true - but what I see
around is that there is a lot of effort duplication in FLOSS because
of fragmentation.  I am more practically inclined and I am searching
the answer why this happens and what can we do about it.  After years
of observing it I think it comes straightly from human competitiveness
(mimetic desire) and it is unavoidable.  There is a book
http://www.theoryoffun.com/ arguing that the fun in games comes mostly
from satisfying our learning drive, I think this is the same case with
FLOSS - people like to be the master of some tool (program, library).
People like to contribute to projects and get that feeling this way -
but whenever they feel that their contribution does not give them a
fair place in the projects hierarchy they will search another project
or start their own to get that feeling of mastery.  This is the
dynamic.  In a way this is the same dynamic of competition between
companies that fuels the capitalistic system - but maybe here this can
be more finely grained - and maybe there is a bit less of lost effort
thanks for the licensing schemas.



Cheers,
Zbigniew Lukasiak
http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/
http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/