Open source

`5:33:44`

is to treat it as a business, as though your users are customers, as though they have claims of legitimacy on your time and your attention and your direction. Because I faced this almost immediately with Ruby on Rails. As soon as it was released, there were a million peoples who had all sorts of opinions about where I ought to take it. And not just opinions, but actually demands. Unless you implement an Oracle database adaptive, this is always gonna be a toy. It was actually more or less that exact demand that prompted me to have a slide at one of the early Rails conferences that just said, fuck you. — [Lex] Yeah, I saw that. — I'm not gonna do what you tell me to. I'm here as a bringer of gift. I am sharing code that I wrote on my own time, on my own volition. And you don't have to say thank you. I mean it'd be nice if you did. You can take the code and do whatever you want with it.

`5:34:45`

You can contribute back if you want, but you can't tell me what to do or where to go or how to act. I'm not a vendor. This is a fundamental misconception that users of open source occasionally step into, because they're used to buying software from companies who really care about their business. I care about people using my software. I think it's great, but we don't have a transactional relationship. I don't get something back when you tell me what to do except grief. And I don't want it, so you can keep it. So my open source philosophy from the start has been, I gotta do this primarily for me. I love when other people find use in my open source. It's not my primary motivation. I'm not primarily doing it for other people. I'm primarily doing it for me and my own objectives because as Adam Smith said, it's not for the benevolence of the butcher that we expect our daily meat. It's for his self-interest.

`5:35:46`

And I actually find that to be a beautiful thought that our comments increase in value when we all pursue our self-interest. Certainly in the realm of open source. This is also why I reject this notion that open source is in some sort of crisis. That there's a funding crisis that we have to spend more. No, we don't. Open source has never been doing better. Open source has never controlled more domains in software than it has right now. There is no crisis. There's a misconception from some people making open source and from a lot of people using open source. That open source is primarily like commercial software. Something you buy and something where you can then make demands as a customer. And that the customer is always right. Customer is not always right. Not even in business, but certainly not in open source. In open source, the customer, as it is, is a receiver of gifts. We are having a gift exchange. I show up and give you my code. If you like it, you can use it.