I can see a whole lot of people agreeing with this. Kinda the same with open source in general, but few open source projects are social protocols seeking widespread adoption. It's a particular flavor of narrative disconnection from reality we have to bridge out of to get out of our own way.
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Every @proto developer sounds like this to me:
Aug 14, 2026 at 12:49 AM
Open Source is Broken
The Open Source movement, as championed by the OSI, prizes absolute openness above all other concerns...
The Missing Middle of Open Source
Why serious, maintainer-driven projects struggle to sustain themselves—and what it will take to fix it.
The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
The open source movement runs on the heroic efforts of not enough people doing too much work. They need help.
Open source is the electric vehicle of digital policy
Open source is very popular these days, not least due to the open-source strategy that the European Commission announced last week as part of the tech sovereignty package. While there is a lot to criticise about that strategy (exaggerated goals, misleading numbers etc), the one thing I would like to
Open Source Explained — Open Indie
Musings on the concept of ‘open source’, in the broadest possible definition of the term. Also an invitation to become a participant in ...
Something Big Happened in 1998
It is reasonable to accept that OSI founded Open Source with the Open Source Definition.
Fueling Open Source with Vibes & Money
Economists think Open Source is a business model. Devs know better, and fund it accordingly.
Open Source Software and Corporate Influence — Andrew Lilley Brinker
Open source software projects are frequently enmeshed with the interests of corporations. We should update mental models of who works on open source accordingly, and build or modify power structures to be more resilient to corporate capture.
Anthony Fu
It’s not a secret that open-source projects are now a critical part of almost every software project. While most open-source projects are maintained by volunteers, the sustainability of these projects becomes a big concern. The recent xz/liblzma vulnerability accident is a great example that shows the importance of open-source projects and how severe the problem could be.
Open source is a restaurant
[[Chad Whitacre]] makes a great analogy around when/how software gets paid for, vs food. Open Source is a restaurant. At a restaurant, you eat your meal fir...
Aaron Boodman on Twitter / X
There is this tension in dev tooling right now: Lots of people want to self-host, and not depend on a service. Lots of people also want the vibes of open source - being part of an open development community, having the code, etc.But builders still need to make a living...— Aaron Boodman (@aboodman) January 23, 2024
Open Source is a cost-allocation system
Because the right to use the software is not tied to payment, the license does not connect the people who benefit, the people who decide, and the people who bear the costs. Projects have to build those connections deliberately through governance.
vit — open source is social
developers and AI agents share software capabilities through a social network — discover what others have built, adapt it to your codebase, build reputation by vouching for what works.
Hypothesis: the simple act of each of us publicly sharing more what we're paying attention to (reading, watching, ..) would dramatically enhance collective sensemaking. In open source software they say "With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow"- perhaps there is a parallel for open source *attention*?
