korrents

← People and their mental models

Nadia Asparouhova's mental models

4 claims Nadia Asparouhova made fit 4 mental models. Most often: Collective action problems, Second-order thinking, Trade-offs. Everything they said here.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Collective action problems

What everyone would gain from, nobody provides alone, so shared goods need someone or something to hold people together.

Used by 18 others

Free riding is not open source’s problem: the users who only download the code impose no cost on anyone.

  1. Nadia Asparouhova Writer and researcher on open source Most users don’t actually impose costs back to maintainers: they download the code and never interact with the project. Making money with licensesnadia.xyz · 14 Mar 2019All korrents from this piece
    Most users don’t actually impose costs back to maintainers: they download the code and never interact with the project.

Second-order thinking

Ask "and then what?": follow a decision past its first effect to the ones that come after.

Used by 86 others

Successful open source developers get hired away by companies, which quietens the very people best placed to argue for making a living from open source.

  1. Nadia Asparouhova Writer and researcher on open source Successful open source developers get “acquihired” by a company who values their reputation and skills, which has the perverse effect of making them less noisy about how to make a living off of open source. Who pays the toolmakers?nadia.xyz · 13 Jun 2018All korrents from this piece
    Successful open source developers get “acquihired” by a company who values their reputation and skills, which has the perverse effect of making them less noisy about how to make a living off of open source.

Trade-offs

Every choice gives something up, so name the cost; and check, because some trade-offs everyone assumes are not real.

Used by 60 others

A contribution is a cost to the maintainer, not a gift: it is taking part, not merely using the code, that consumes a project’s scarcest resource.

  1. Nadia Asparouhova Writer and researcher on open source It’s only when users cross over to the production side (ex. report bugs, ask questions, submit patches) that they start to impose costs. Making money with licensesnadia.xyz · 14 Mar 2019All korrents from this piece
    It’s only when users cross over to the production side (ex. report bugs, ask questions, submit patches) that they start to impose costs.

Value moves to what stays scarce

When something becomes cheap and plentiful, the value moves to whatever is still rare next to it.

Used by 59 others

The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise.

  1. Nadia Asparouhova Writer and researcher on open source While everyone is focused on putting up tollbooths, opportunities to “price” maintainer attention, and access to maintainers, remain undervalued. Making money with licensesnadia.xyz · 14 Mar 2019All korrents from this piece
    While everyone is focused on putting up tollbooths, opportunities to “price” maintainer attention, and access to maintainers, remain undervalued.