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

"Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights." - Byrne Hobart from The Diff on "Working in Public".The book gives a nuanced overview of the many communities and economics of open source, from the idealistic communities of 30 years ago that we usually think about to the modern GitHub era."Working in Public" offers a unique lens into the economics and communities of online creatives, tracking open source's evolution from fringe idealism to becoming a ubiquitous utility - while creating trillions in economic value along the way (relatively little of which went to creators).As work on a project gets less and less fun over time, the book offers creative solutions for incentive problems, ranging from creator monetization features from Twitch, to patronage, to a peer-sourced community, to not maintaining projects to get your attention back - all part of a buffet of emerging options for an economic model stuck in the past that looks like Esports a la 2011.The book is also witty and funny (my favorite analogy for maintenance was a neighbor who comes and knocks on your doors with requests for how you should put up your Christmas lights), and has a high bar for craft throughout - everything is impeccably well designed, including the cover texture, page weight, and lie flat binding. The same level of craft and precision went into every detail about what was in and out of scope for the book, necessary given how demanding extractive contributors can be (and surely will be about this book!).Creators first. This book lives that message, from its physical form to its message. Great book!

A great primer on various methods of contributing to and funding open source. It is refreshing to learn many of us struggle with the very same things and consider the successes from various projects.

The author has written an excellent account of open source software as it is developed on today. Even though the author is not a developer herself, she seems to have a better grasp of the topic than many developers among the open source contributors and consumers. While no definitive answers are provided in this book on burning questions such as how best to make open source “sustainable”, this book does a magnificent job of framing the pertinent issues and pointing towards the critical few variables that will need to be solved for. More importantly, this book discusses the important relationships around software projects - between maintainers and core non-code contributors, between project members and consumers, between maintainers and their platforms and tools. Given how important open source has become to the software industry, this book is a must read for everyone in either open source communities or in the commercial software development profession.

It's never clear who this book is for. If it's for people who are "in" the field, the content is 95% common knowledge (common in the field, that is), and a couple decent observations that could have been done in an online blog post or a magazine article-length essay. If it's for people who are not in the field, it's just boring. Every single thing the author looks at, it's either "different for every project" or "beyond the scope of this book".Beyond the scope of the book are some interesting things that needed to be in the book. The central underlying axiom is that Github is the pinnacle of where open source is happening, and nothing will replace that. Except that some of the most widely used open source software pieces are not on Github, or use Github as a mere repository out of convenience. No space is given to dive into how for-profit, commercial companies "interface" with open source in so many ways. And the notion that code does not have monetary value is simply laughable.Instead of looking at anecdotes that are more amusing than illuminating, the narrative needs to span the history of free software and open source from the early days. In depth, and not just in passing. The author's own experience with open source does not mark the "true" beginning of the story. It might be for the author personally, but the "book" reads more like a hastily-slapped together high school essay that needed to fill the page quota.Every single chapter is, unfortunately, a disappointment. There are, as I mentioned, a couple of decent observations that hold right now, in this very moment. But there's no meat. No substance. No narrative. Nothing to chew on. Nothing that keeps you thinking and coming back to it after you're done with it.

Nadia distills years of the open source movement, overlapping with the growth of social media, into readily understandable terms and highlights not only successes, but failures. In doing so, she makes a path forward achievable for both those wanting to help produce, and who want to consume, these kinds of abundant services without a tragedy of the commons kind of outcome. Well founded insights are wrapped into some thoughtful hypothesis of the road's forward and where they might lead. If you're interested in OSS, how it works, and where it's (likely) going - this is a must-read.

I'm a finance person working w/ some SaaS co.s and I needed some coaching up re: open source, Git versus GitHub etc. A big help! Just one example, pages 56 - 65 explain how to think about a project's user growth rates - versus contributor growth rates - via a matrix of clever analogies (federations vs. clubs vs. toys vs. stadiums). Also I enjoyed learning about some of the individual creators and personalities (some a bit wacky) behind the structure of the industry.

This is very detailed book on a complex subject. I suspect the author spent NUMEROUS hours researching the different topics covered in the book. As a bonus her writing skills are superior. Very easy to read.

Um livro profundo, que engaja desde o início, sempre trazendo insights e comentários interessantes sobre a comunidade do open source e suas implicações para o mundo moderno que cada vez mais depende dessa infra-estrutura.

Its depth exceeded my expectations greatly. A lot of the phenomena described in this book are applicable beyond open source. Nowadays a lot of businesses start from a community so this book also provides sufficient insights for start-ups

I felt this book gave me a good survey of the Open Source software world, and really provided a compass for Ken Fogel's paper on Producing Open Source Software.

Very engaging read. Great experience on Kindle app (iPad).As a relatively new developer keen to get involved in open-source, this book has provided an excellent grounding in ‘why’ people write open-source products, how they avoid becoming overwhelmed by user requests/issues, and a few potential mechanisms for earning a modest livelihood along the way.I particularly liked the author’s comparisons to news outlets and social media influencers as alternative examples of ‘content creators’. I had never really considered open-source developers to be content creators, but in retrospect this makes a lot of sense. We’re seeing an increase in ‘influencer culture’ in the tech space - now I understand why.Definitely worth reading this book! I thoroughly enjoyed it.