In “Homesteading and the Noosphere,” Eric S. Raymond discusses his examination of open source culture as a peer game, where participants forgo material desires in favor of reputation. However, this reputation is checked by a caveat: no one who acts egotistically is allowed to acquire reputation, but is this system possible? Is reputation a viable reward when ego is repressed? Or is hackerism a subtle replacement for a different corporate arrangement?
Raymond acknowledges this contradiction early in the essay by saying that “Anyone who watches the busy, tremendously productive world of Internet open-source software for a while is bound to notice an interesting contradiction between what open-source hackers say they believe and the way they actually behave—between the official ideology of the open-source culture and its actual practice.” This isn’t a direct criticism of open source. If someone looks carefully they kind find contradiction in the spoken principles as well. The foundational ideas of hackerism are impossible to try and implement without some contradiction.
I love the idea of hackerism. I’m convinced that I want to be a hacker. But I’m not sure that I understand the rules of the game. Maybe it’s that the rules aren’t as strict as I think, but perhaps there is a way to make the whole system work and I just don’t see it.
If we examine Raymond’s list of taboo behaviors, we start to see elements of the open source that encourage behavior distinct from the open source.
There is strong social pressure against forking projects. It does not happen except under plea of dire necessity, with much public self-justification, and requires a renaming. I find this weird, because Free software was supposed to allow anyone to access/modify at their heart’s content. This makes software much more available to consumers, as limiting the number of forks keeps users from becoming confused, but I feel like open source is restricting itself with a rule like this.
“Distributing changes to a project without the cooperation of the moderators is frowned upon, except in special cases like essentially trivial porting fixes.” This touches on the forking issue again, if others aren’t allowed to start their own forks, touching other forks willy-nilly is dangerous. I actually like this rule better than the anti-forking policy, because it is essentially a pledge that whatever one does to software that they use, they will not touch something another person depends on without going through channels that should make that person aware of the change with reasonable notice.
“Removing a person’s name from a project history, credits, or maintainer list is absolutely not done without the person’s explicit consent.” This seems fair, everyone should get credit for the work they did, however, it’s hard to dissociate this from trademarking. The contradiction is that open source contributors don’t like to be faceless or replaceable (no one does), but as a result their names attach to things like trademarks. Keeping your name on a thing you helped make isn’t the same as branding, but its weird for a culture that looks down on ego to be so touchy about giving credit. Perhaps the more proper description of the Hacker stance on ego is no to be ego free, but for everybody to maintain balance with exactly the same amount of ego.
Taken together, all of these taboos bear the trappings feel like the open source world has incorporated itself. Is this because some elements associated with corporatization are actually good, or at least inseparable from organized software development?
Decryptic 