Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This article reports on an increasing tension in open source projects. As they become more successful, contributions from corporations increase, and this changes the dynamics of the community, resulting in an increased focus on the 'project', and resulting in the "concealment" of the processes and mechanisms that govern to the project. The result is a need to balance the need to produce a workable product with the conversation and interaction that is characterics of open source. "Splitting the community project from the usable product is an inflection point for this new form of open source project work, and emblematic of the intrusion of the 'device paradigm'." This often results in an enclosed commercial product becoming predominant, with a residual less-functional husk being left over for the original contributors and users. Image: Torch API / Concealment.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

Copyright 2024
Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 12:48 p.m.

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