Open Source, Gratefulness and Self-interest

An Unexpected Gift

Yesterday, I was surprised to receive this email in my inbox. My heart instantly lit up. I was glad to know that someone out there not only appreciates my work but also has taken the time to write a heartfelt message and even decided to grant me a gift. A gift that cost people hours and money!!

This little interaction unearthed lots of conflicting feelings I’ve been having about open source as of late. You put your time and effort into improving an existing piece of software that some company out there is making money from, and yet nobody spares a single second of their life to look your way to even say thank you! God forbid a monetary compensation.

The Meteor 3.0 Migration: A Lonely Battle

For those of you who are unacquainted, Meteor, the JS framework, underwent a serious change that made almost all of the third party packages and even codebases prior to its 3.x incompatible. So every package out there that had any hint of slight usefulness had to be adapted. With child’s enthusiasm I rushed to the forums to start an article to organize people’s efforts. I thought to myself we’d be like a beehive, each one contributing their change, working simultaneously towards this grand goal — but much to my surprise and dismay, aside from the usual faces who would contribute regardless if I had written this article or not, nobody batted an eye. No one lifted a finger. I was completely devastated.

I had my negatives with Meteor Software (the company behind Meteor) and at times even had advocated for transitioning the framework out of the company’s hands to the community. But when the time had come for the community to not even contribute to the framework or even attend to a serious change like the fibers removal, nobody lifted a finger!!

Shouting into the Void

At times, it felt like shouting atop my lungs in an empty room; there was nobody to listen to me. So what’s the point of all the shouting? What’s the point of even open source? It felt like being the pawns on the front line getting the first hit and dying for no one to appreciate. I wouldn’t fight for such an army who wouldn’t appreciate my life!

This very same article which garnered lots of positive feedback was actually Golgotha themed, where the article was split up into stations similar to the road to the cross. Thankfully Daniel was there to review it and told me to make it more positive. Yeah, I know it sounds like I have some sort of a messiah complex waiting for people to applaud me for my efforts, but you know, a little appreciation goes a long way!!

Finding a Healthier Approach to Open Source

I’ve lately been trying to make sense of all of this and try to integrate the OSS work I do in a healthier way, where I’d only work on things that naturally spark my interest and curiosity. Stuff I’m truly interested in so regardless if I get thanked for it or not, I’d still be glad that I did it because I truly like it instead of being bitter or salty.

This also coincides with this article written by DHH. In a nutshell, it advocates for self-interest on the OSS contributors’ end. You should put your needs first and foremost; this is what got him to contribute for almost twenty years. He puts himself and his company needs first, developing software that suits their needs and then open sourcing his code for the whole world to benefit from it and use it to build companies of their own and contributing back to it and help make it better again, looping back to his self-interest goals.

Also, he laments about a common ailment which he calls “Vendoritis,” where users of open source expect a standard customer support level of treatment. And this lack of clarity on both ends is what leads to such resentment. Because OSS maintainers expect gratitude and appreciation for their work while users expect quality software and get angry when maintainers don’t deliver on their end. This needs to be advertised on all open source projects out there so both parties can adjust their expectations. OSS is nothing but a string-free gift.

The Philosophy of Self-Interest vs. Selfishness

This is a great segway into an underlying philosophy which I’ve come to develop. True benevolence should come from a place of self-interest. And yes, you can put yourself first while benefiting other people around you. Some people take pleasure in helping others and kudos to them, but for others, they do it for themselves, and I’m willing to bet there are plenty of people like these. Philanthropists give out money in order to feel good about themselves, people give out money to charities to get tax breaks, companies do it for public recognition and marketing, etc. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Matter of fact, for those who are interested in charitable causes should definitely think of ways to benefit the giving end.

Don’t confuse self-interest with selfishness. Selfishness is the act of doing something with complete disregard for the well being of others to the extent of even hurting other at the expense of benefiting one’s self. While self-interest is a more balanced act when one prioritizes one’s self while still benefiting others. And at the very least one doesn’t put himself at a disadvantage which is also unhealthy.

The Oxygen Mask Principle

It’s the old thing about the oxygen mask: Help yourself first, so that you are in a position to give freely.

And the problem with OS is of course, it can be hard to monetize. So people can drive themselves into a bad position by trying to help, doing what they love, and “doing the right thing”. And that can be frustrating.

When helping out others, you should always think of yourself first—do you want to do it? If there’s a reason that benefits you, that’s even better because that’s the key to truly feel good about it long term. I encourage such behavior because giving away in any form or shape while expecting anything in return will always result in resentment, as the receiving party isn’t obliged to return the favor and most likely than not it won’t. And this is the only way in my opinion to sustain acts of “kindness” for the long term. I don’t know how this way of altruism came about to be the de-facto way of dealing with things. Maybe religion, Judeo-Christian cultural heritage, I don’t know. Regardless, I intend on applying this philosophy moving forward.

Creating a Self-Reinforcing Loop

So here’s my way of doing it: I’ve been a GitHub sponsor continuously for multiple Meteor contributors even when I was out of employment for more than a year due to military service. My reasoning behind this is if I give more money to people who contribute to Meteor, they’re going to help improve and make Meteor a better framework, thus making companies use Meteor, which drives my value up as a Meteor developer. It’s a self-reinforcing loop, and the more I make out of Meteor, the more I intend to share. It was also a statement to myself. I need to be there for Meteor at my lowest so it can be there for me at its highest.

I’m going to split this awesome $100 into 5 equivalent parts given to Kelly Copley, Jan Küster, Jan Dvorak, Dr Dimitry and me as way to pat myself on the back.

Thank you Andrew for uplifting my day, making me feel good about the open source work I do. You may also want to check out Glyphic Software which offers an AI-based solution for automatically reading and processing large firehoses of documents.