Musing on nostalgia and open-source

A friend of mine recently told me that a study was explaining that your taste in music is sort of cemented around 30 with your youth being the gist of what you'll be attracted to. I don't know if that study is grounded but I do relate. I tend to always come back to music from my teens. Good for me I was a teen in the early 90s which is objectively - you didn't ask but you'll get it anyway - the best era in music. Ssshhh in the back.

We do this all the time: "it was way better when I was young" for about anything. Including, at least for me, the fun I had in the open source world. Yet, I do realise this is not only subjective it's also rather pointless to think that way.

Humouring you folks for a minute (go put an unplugged album from the 90s and get yourself a tea). What did it feel like to do Open-Source back twenty-five years ago? Well, of course I can only speak for myself but there was a feeling of being outside of "the System". Granted I was about 18-ish so I was programmed (hah!) to sort of look for something that would let me feel free and in control. Whatever that meant.

Personally, Open-Source was initially two fold. First and foremost, that's where I could enjoy coding. I know this will sound cliché but I've always been attracted to that creative activity. I didn't understand what programming was but I just loved the concept. Open-Source, and more foundamentally Linux, was a dream. I vividly remember installing my first Red Hat back in 1997. I had no idea what I was even doing but my mind was racing. One sentiment I do remember is that sensation of freedom. Interesting, movies such as Gattaca, Dark City, the Matrix or Fight Club came around that time and they all touch on that idea of freedom, individual or social. Perhaps that was the mood of the time.

So, open-source was freedom to me. Freedom of coding what I wanted however I wanted. Freedom from "the System". At least, this is how I viewed Linux back then - it then took me some time to get interested into licensing and the FOSS vs Open-Source didn't interest me very much.

Has this sense of freedom gone? There is no truth here because it's not a universal feeling. For me though, Open-source has changed. Parts have improved while some other sides leave me doubtful. The tooling is so much nicer these days. I mean, dealing with patch files, CVS or even Subversion was a great way to test your patience.

What I find more difficult to adjust to is the bigger picture that Open-Source seems to represent these days. Being an Open-Source project of a somewhat popular projects will turn you into any kind of managers: project, marketing, people (contributors), users. You are considering failing at your project if all these dimensions aren't taken care for.

I'm not saying this is wrong. These are important but they add so much burden onto maintainers. We often talk about people burning out at work, but let's put it on the table: popular open-source projects can burn you out just as much and nobody will pick up the pieces once you've fallen.

Recently Luca Palmieri made the following statement:

I couldn't quite tell why but this rubbed me the wrong way even though I usually listen to Luca as he's very well thought. I understand what Luca means but I can't help feel this expectation is unfair and against that freedom I was mentionning before. I do not need to make anyone's life easier, I don't have to fullfil any hope. Sure this may prevent misunderstandings down the road - the idea is sound - but it should not be an injunction.

In many respects, Open-Source projects are not so much different from when I was young. People gather around a goal, communicate over some form of messaging and contribute code and feedback. The tools were a bit more crude but the core was similar. Fuds existed and project communities turned at times into cliques. There wasn't really a notion of community governance, at least not that I can recall anyhow. I want to think there was care for members but, by and large, it wasn't a topic that was highly worked on in my memories.

The main difference I see today is how demanding conducting a project has become.

But if open-source projects are now meant to be so demanding and wide in areas of focuses, how does the ecosystem becomes sustainable?

Isaac Schlueter explored that topic in a fascinating discussion:

Clearly, we do not have a solution yet for ensuring OSS can scale as a protocol for people to contribute while sustain their livelyhood. First, there are many reasons why one goes Open-Source. You may just want to improve your résumé and be visible. Or maybe, you want to support the Commons. Or maybe you don't give a toss about any of it and just like to put your code somewhere. Perhaps you want to build a business on top of an open-source solution. All of these are valid but it creates confusion in the discussion around sustaining the ecosystem because it makes it hard to define the scope and direction.

Perhaps Open-Source should now be considered a public service and funded through our taxes? This doesn't offend me as we use taxes for most public services - at least in France - this is a virtuous feedback loop in my book. Disconnecting open-source sustainability from companies interests might have some positive effect. I'm not sure this is a popular idea and certainly not in the pipeline of the EU for instance. In a recent EU study of OSS/OSH impact, they understand the needs for the sustainability argument, but they treat OSS as another form of business and apply the rules they know: those of the Market.

The Enhanced EIC pilot provides grant-only support along with blended finance, i.e. grants in combination with equity investment. The Enhanced EIC pilot’s stage funding helps to boost fast company growth and market-creating innovation.

Twenty years ago, OSS was either demonized by many private companies, ignored by most of the public sectors - though the EU had grants for OSS efforts, I remember being part of the Open-Health project for instance back in 2003 - or simply considered as an arena for geeks.

Some successes already showed the way though, Linux or MySQL/PostgreSQL come to mind of course. Businesses even nicely bloomed. But this didn't create a systemic understanding of the right solution to the problem of supporting the entire OSS ecosystem. That wasn't their purpose either.

But the challenge is that OSS isn't an entity. It's a set of ideas, values, principles and more. But not a thing you could put a captain on. So, finding a solution that would work across the board is likely impossible. It will be a variety of approaches, specific to particular needs - again the idea of a tax-funded public service for OSS in strategic areas like healthcare, communication, etc. sounds interesting. OSS co-op could be an approach as well...

Anyway.

Have I lost the freedom I felt I had years ago? Am I nostalgic? I don't think I am. But the cards are nonetheless different now and what sounded like a place to escape is everywhere and in fact the very fabric of this digital era. Maybe, my insouciance is simply gone. Why grow up afterall?

PS: This post was obviously written with a quality soundtrack in the back from the early 90s: Grant Lee Buffalo // Fuzzy album.