>> Home / research / community
∵ Mari-chan ∴ 2022-06-26 ∞ 4'
Open source sounds like a crazy dream within our capitalist world. Sylvain Corlay, the CEO of QuantStack, said that he explained the idea of open source to people, and they told him that if they didn't understand that this [open source] existed, they wouldn't believe such a thing was possible.
I've never seen open source through these goggles because to me, it was such an obvious effort in the direction we should strive for as a race. But they are, of course, right. Open source is almost unbelievable when you consider the "normal" world and the things happening around it.
I want to better understand how open source happens.
One way of doing that is to research how anarchic organizations come into place and understand anarchism better. I've read a few anarchist books throughout my life because it's the political orientation that I agree with the most, but I don't feel like I've done enough. Currently, I'm reading (jeez, I forgot the name):
Something something about the criticisms of Anarchism itself; it's a messy and unstructured ideology (it's good but also pretty bad).
"Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty."
It's also important to understand organizational structures at a higher level. For that, I know Mushtaq Khan is doing important work (https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/mushtaq-khan-institutional-economics/). But who else is relevant? I'm not sure, but definitely something I should pursue too. (God, there's so much context on this link; this is probably a good way to start.)
Another important aspect of open source is, of course, open source itself. I have to understand its origin more deeply. I've read countless articles and books from the very creators of the movements we use today, but I don't think I have a good enough understanding of how it came to be and where it's headed. I wonder if the creators or instigators of the movement themselves have an idea of what happened and how, of what's happening right now, and if they have good predictions of what will happen.
Focusing on the idea of open source studying itself, I think it's always useful to have tons of data. And as important as having data is asking the right questions. I've been avoiding starting to think about these questions because I feel unprepared, but I think the earlier I start, the more iterations I can have, and the better my questions will be. So here's an attempt at some questions that a) I'd like to ask the fathers and mothers (do we have mothers? :/) of the movement and b) my peers who are both researchers and users. Okay:
We see a lot of coming and going in open-source projects. It's hard to find maintainers who will do meaningful, useful work, and who will stick around and "repay" all the work other maintainers do to onboard them. (Is this perspective of exchange wrong to begin with? I see a lot of this in literature talking about open source. Maybe this very capitalistic perspective on something that's not capitalistic at all is very wrong. Though it is true that maintainers have finite time, and onboarding lots of people and almost never having your work rewarded can be consuming.) So why does this happen in your opinion?
Why isn't your research open? The benefits of having it peer-reviewed will make it better. You'll be able to discuss it at a deep level with other experts who can go through your data and code and improve it, ask challenging questions. You can share knowledge and advance faster. I understand this might not be the optimal way of dealing with some research because of the monetary incentive that might disappear if it's open. But to what extent is this true? To what extent are people afraid of peers' feedback? Is this all caused by big, evil corporations that just want to make money and don't care about human development? (Am I too naive?)
I think more or less in the same category as the previous question, why aren't scientific papers aiming for open research? I suppose this is because they make a lot of money selling access to their platforms?
Okay, I'll work on my other stuff for now.