Discussion
I looked something up on Stack Overflow, thought the existing answers were kind of meh, mulled the problem over, found a •much• better answer to the question, and then…I didn’t post it. I thought about Stack Overflow itself and all the harvesters and scrapers digesting my answer and not giving me one cent or even credit, and I just…didn’t.
The capture and extraction of the commons come with costs that are slow, pervasive, and hard to measure.
This reply I’ll disagree with in a way that is secretly deeper agreement: https://hachyderm.io/@kajord/117360945204651784
People have long created commons in spaces that are private in the sense of “limited access” and private in the sense of “owned or controlled by non-public entities.” This sort of “adversarial commons” formation is a major cultural force; it reshapes the world. And yes, when the proverbial bulldozers come to re-assert the private-ness of a space some community has made its own, it’s a bitter pill every time. But if folks are sometimes naive not to see it coming, I don’t think they’re naive for •trying•. Creating community is good, even when it’s in opposition to systemic forces that are likely to make the effort a temporary one.
@inthehands Similar problem here: My company is about to release a software product. We had intended to make the software itself open source, but following lengthy and intensive internal discussions, we have decided against it because we believe the code will, one way or another, end up being used as training data in some AI model and used without contributing back to the project.
I would never have thought that the open-source idea would come to an end in this way. :-(
Speaking as a former open source project author (ISC dhcp, since EOL'd), that's how it was then too. You write the code, people use it, they don't pay you for it, rinse, repeat (with notable exceptions, mind you, but still).
On the other hand, a lot of people benefited from the work, and I had funding, so I think it went pretty well. I'm sure it's been digested. Code quality could have been better, so... :)
@inthehands it was never the "commons" if it was a privately owned for-profit website. There are so many examples of volunteer work contributed in good faith to what they thought was a community that ended up stolen and walled off.
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Both of these replies elicited a knee-jerk “fuck you” from me:
https://types.pl/@jj/117361717455907441
https://mastodon.nl/@abhayakara/117362054181314628
…but that fuck you deserves spelling out:
1. Giving people credit for their work is and long has been a part of the Commons. It’s why we know the names of famous artists and scientists whose contribution to the cultural commons has long outlived them or any copyright they held. “The commons” has never meant that plagiarism is OK. Come on. Be serious.
2. Of •course• people get a say in how their work is used even when it’s a part of the commons. Ever heard of the GPL?
3. I’m not asking to be paid. I’m saying that if •you• are going to get rich by plagiarizing my work, •then• you need to pay me. I agree with Brent Hecht on this.
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