Weeknotes: open source, information maintenance, next weekend fun
Being back in open source, work on funding it is especially interesting. Nadia Eghbal writes about the different motivations of funders of open source - corporates, who want technical outputs and brand association, compared to individuals who value the work of others as an inspiration and as training material.
Pia Mancini compares GitHub Sponsors to OpenCollective - a useful breakdown of different ways to go about supporting open source maintainers.
André Staltz has made an analysis of what funding to a selection of open source projects looks like compared to a 'fair salary' for the maintainers involved, and an interesting critique of what parts of the FOSS ecosystem funding world are visible or not. I hadn't realised TideLift (an open source subscription platform) were VC backed - I wonder how they plan to generate the revenue/exit that will require.
A reflection on the vogue for tidying, and Marie Kondo, and modern life:
The idea that everything must be subjected to an economic model that requires efficiencies from optimized individuals is life-sapping because it puts the burden on the individual and the household to weather all storms: extreme inequality, ecological disaster, the shift to gigwork and automation in the workplace. It’s harder to feel that spark of joy if all your belongings are keenly felt as a bulwark against impossible demands.
The Information Maintainers community has launched - "we hope to encourage and sustain a discussion of information maintenance through the lens of care." Check out the full paper -
As information maintainers, we sustain bodies of information,
information systems, and the communities that support them. The
authors of this document are community organizers and facilitators,
archivists, repository managers, project managers, designers, librarians,
higher education faculty and administrators, researchers, grant makers,
and leaders of nonprofit organizations, industry, and consortia. We
are also individuals who wear different hats at different times, and
who therefore have widely varied experiences with and in information
maintenance. We see this mottled variety as a strength, integral to
nurturing generosity and imagination in the framing of maintenance.
Radiohead suffered a ransomware attack, with hackers threatening to release old content if the band didn't pay up; they decided to ignore it, instead putting the content online for £1 per minidisk, and give the proceeds to Extinction Rebellion.
This article - written by someone who has, albeit briefly, worked in an AI lab, points out why 'outsourcing' or offshoring ethics doesn't work, and the constraints of software/engineering mindsets and organisational communications. I think it could have gone further - the VP who says 'any ethics would be my ethics' is a pointer to how business imperatives and structures (and people's own desire for wealth and power) render other questions moot.
Dave Birch, always so interesting and entertaining on money and identity, outlines some thoughts on provenance for physical goods.
Is the UK economy underestimating the impact of manufacturing? A new report from Cambridge's Institute for Manufacturing explores this question, and suggests that yes, between business classification, digitisation changing dynamics and an increasingly networked economy, we might not realise how important manufacturing is to us.
The nettime mailing list has been lively with debate around making, given the recent collapse of Maker Media. Adrian McEwen and I discussed makerspaces and social issues at the British Computer Society open source meetup, and I'll try to write up my notes soon. It was good to have an excuse to try to assemble something out of a vague sense of a need for evolution and understanding of the social and political context of making.
The Digital Life Collective has produced a beautiful deck outlining their new 'collaboration as a service' offering.
The FT has a new newsletter on 'moral money' covering ESG, impact investing and sustainable business.
Today is the centenary of the Women's Engineering Society, which was set up when women were unable to continue in engineering and technical jobs when the first World War ended. It's also International Day of Women in Engineering - still needed to raise the visibility of women engineers in our narratives about technology, and to address the gender disparity in the profession at all levels.
There's a lovely map showing a selection of the most amazing women engineers.
If you are in or near Cambridge next Sunday it's Puntcon. You should go, it'll be lovely. I won't be there, because it's MakeFest in Liverpool on the 29th. You should go to that too - it's a huge, friendly and fun free event in the Central Library, and you really don't need to know anything about making or to be a maker to enjoy it. (I'm the crew lead this year and will endeavour to live up to the responsibility.)