This link to a 9m Clay Skirky talk showed up in the comments of my last post from the always-connected Allan Doyle.
I really like the anecdote about trying to explain Perl support to C++ programmers. The idea that "support comes from companies, exclusively" seems imported from an earlier time, when the statement was literally true. Before the internet, the only reasonable place to get expert support (or quality software, for that matter) would be a largish company. Folks whose professional expertise was forged during that time seem, except for some freakish exceptions, to find it hard to mentally transition to the new order of things.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Great video. Thanks Paul (and fellow commenter). Maybe it's just me but have NEVER experienced a sense of support from any of the proprietary software companies, and I have paid a lot of money for software over the years.
I loved the bit about AT&T and it reminded me of so many great software tools that have disappeared because they were either no longer "supported" (Delphi, Kylix) or they were bought and then squashed (DesqView, Stacker, PC Tools, CleanSweep, Ghost).
When people have the tools and generate great software because they love to do it, it's pretty hard to justify paying a fee, but for those that have been paying huge fees for support for many years, and especially if you don't love writing software yourself, it must be difficult to imagine anyone supporting software for free.
I'm clear, I love writing software so much that would write software, even if I wasn't paid to do so.
I am trying to think of another type of volunteer organization where the people participate simply for the love doing it. I am having a hard time coming up with one. Maybe this is part of the reason that free and open source software is so difficult for some to comprehend, especially if they don't participate in it.
It's a new pattern, a new mental model. Sure there are lots of great examples of smaller organizations and charities that do work to help others, but it's the love aggregation factor that the internet enables that can create exceptional outcomes like we are seeing now.
Great video!
I would replace "love" with "evolutionary meme for tool-building".
But of course that's a bit of a mouthful to repeat 20 times for a speaking engagement....
Post a Comment