On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 9:01 PM, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote:
> > Wonder is not being able to fork a project, make some patches, > submit a bunch of pull requests and then get a handful of them > committed upstream... That is so.... solitary. The wonder is > working *with* and collaborating *with* and reaching consensus > *with* a group of similarly-minded individuals towards a > common goal. The wonder is the community. And I think that > that is something which is at risk. > There is some good psych theory that would be helpful in understanding the dichotomy you describe, and I think it's existed before the OSS revolution and continues through today. You just did a great job of describing your approach, and mine and many others at the foundation who are extroverts. We enjoy the interaction, and when a community is healthy, enjoy providing positive feedback loops, encouragement and praise, and the ultimate praise (to have ones code committed to the project). Spending a weekend with my kids, who are both introverts, helps remind me of the needs of those who are not 'public people'. We have many successful examples, I'm thinking especially of Sam or even Rich who are actually much quieter and reserved and generally 'go off into their own space' to accomplish things, and thrive in the solitary spaces where they can assemble something they are happy with. All of our many introverts then bring back Cool Things(TM) and interact with the community to get them accepted, but the "fun" for them is the detached-creative process, while the "fun" for the extroverts is the communal nature of the whole collaborative development effort. You might enjoy taking your own Meyers Briggs assessment and compare notes with friends or collaborators on different projects and social groups. It goes a long way in bridging the understanding gaps between these very different approaches to contributions, collaboration and assembling a collective work :) Plenty of free tests to pick from on the web. > To me, Open Source provided an avenue that allowed coders > (and other contributors) to finally work together, openly > and honestly, transparently and meritocractically (if you get > my meaning); it fostered sharing, but not by letting someone > share our toys by playing with them by themselves in some corner > of the sandbox. It was about us all sharing the toys to build > a great sand castle all together in that sandbox, when before > we couldn't. > > Are people doing it for fun? Are people seeing the joy and > wonder in our eyes? Or are people doing it just because "that's > what I get paid to do"? > I expect both, just as I hope we have room for introverts and extroverts to accomplish exactly what you describe, sharing the toys to ultimately build the biggest collaborative sand castle that we can be proud of together, but with very different motivations and senses of reward :)
