Credit as Currency

Credit is the primary currency of the free software world. Whatever people may say about their motivations for participating in a project, I don’t know any developers who would be happy doing all their work anonymously, or under someone else’s name. There are tangible reasons for this: one’s reputation in a project roughly governs how much influence one has, and participation in an open source project can also indirectly have monetary value, because some employers now look for it on resumés. There are also intangible reasons, perhaps even more powerful: people simply want to be appreciated, and instinctively look for signs that their work was recognized by others. The promise of credit is therefore one of best motivators the project has. When small contributions are acknowledged, people come back to do more.

— Karl Fogel, Producing Open Source Software

The Zeroth Human Freedom

We who lived in concentration camps can remember those who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude to any set of circumstances – to choose our own way.

This quote is from From Death-Camp to Existentialism (a.k.a. Man’s Search for Meaning) by Victor Frankl. Frankl was an Austrian Jew who spent four years in concentration camps, and afterwards wrote a book about his experiences which has sold over 10 million copies. This quote was part of a sermon yesterday (on contentment) but I share it here because it’s very powerful, and I think it’s also very relevant to how communities live together – with Mozilla being a case in point.

Choosing one’s attitude to a set of circumstances – of which “someone has written something I disagree with and I have become aware of it” is but a small example – is an ability we all have. If someone even in the unimaginable horror of a concentration camp can still retain it, we should all be able to exercise it too. We can choose to react with equanimity… or not. We can choose to be offended and outraged and angry… or not. To say that we cannot do this is to say that we have lost the most basic of human freedoms. No. We are all more than the sum of our circumstances.