Sunday, July 13, 2008

What Motivates OSS developers (per Clay Shirky)

Video clip of Clay Shirky's presentation at Supernova 2007, comparing the Ise shrine to the Perl user community. The shrine is re-built every 20 years from forest that supplied wood for original building. UNESCO would have none of it, since the original was not preserved. "Perl is a shinto shrine," in the sense that it perseveres over time through the love of its community, not through signed contract and financial promise (or in the case of the shrine, a solid physical presence). He says, "Standing from today, looking towards the future, you will make more accurate predictions about software, and, in this web-driven world, about services, if you ask yourself not 'what’s the business model?' but rather 'do the people who like it take care of each other?' That turns out to be the better predictor of longevity."



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