Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Summary

Studies how open source projects actually work today. Many are maintained by one or a few people facing heavy demands from users who don’t contribute.

Why it’s useful here

An empirical correction to the bazaar ideal. Most projects aren’t communities, which matters when choosing self-hosted software that a community will depend on.

Key ideas

• Project types: federations, clubs, toys, stadiums
• Maintenance burden and attention as scarce resources

Related

• raymond-1999-cathedral-and-the-bazaar.md
• federici-2019-re-enchanting-the-world.md