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Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software Hardcover – 4 August 2020

by Nadia Eghbal (Author)

109 ratings

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Hardcover, 4 August 2020

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An inside look at modern open source software developers--and their influence on our online social world.

"Nadia is one of today's most nuanced thinkers about the depth and potential of online communities, and this book could not have come at a better time." --Devon Zuegel, director of product, communities at GitHub

Open source software in which developers publish code that anyone can use has long served as a bellwether for other online behavior. In the late 1990s, it provided an optimistic model for public collaboration, but in the last 20 years it s shifted to solo operators who write and publish code that's consumed by millions.

In Working in Public, Nadia Eghbal takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution over the last two decades, and its ramifications for an internet reorienting itself around individual creators. Eghbal, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open source offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators. She examines the trajectory of open source projects, including:
-- the platform of GitHub, for hosting and development;
-- the structures, roles, incentives, and relationships involved;
-- the often-overlooked maintenance required of its creators;
-- and the costs of production that endure through an application's lifetime.

Eghbal also scrutinizes the role of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and Instagram which reduce infrastructure and distribution costs for creators, but which massively increase the scope of interactions with their audience.

Open source communities are increasingly centered around the work of individual developers rather than teams. Similarly, if creators, rather than discrete communities, are going to become the epicenter of our online social systems, we need to better understand how they work and we can do so by studying what happened to open source.

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Product details

ISBN-10 : 0578675862
ISBN-13 : 978-0578675862
Language: : English

Best Sellers Rank: 26,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 47 in Computer History & Culture
- 98 in Software Design, Testing & Engineering
- 112 in Technology

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Amazon.com: 14 reviews

Kirill Grouchnikov

Painful to read

11 August 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

It's never clear who this book is for. If it's for people who are "in" the field, the content is 95% common knowledge (common in the field, that is), and a couple decent observations that could have been done in an online blog post or a magazine article-length essay. If it's for people who are not in the field, it's just boring. Every single thing the author looks at, it's either "different for every project" or "beyond the scope of this book".

Beyond the scope of the book are some interesting things that needed to be in the book. The central underlying axiom is that Github is the pinnacle of where open source is happening, and nothing will replace that. Except that some of the most widely used open source software pieces are not on Github, or use Github as a mere repository out of convenience. No space is given to dive into how for-profit, commercial companies "interface" with open source in so many ways. And the notion that code does not have monetary value is simply laughable.

Instead of looking at anecdotes that are more amusing than illuminating, the narrative needs to span the history of free software and open source from the early days. In depth, and not just in passing. The author's own experience with open source does not mark the "true" beginning of the story. It might be for the author personally, but the "book" reads more like a hastily-slapped together high school essay that needed to fill the page quota.

Every single chapter is, unfortunately, a disappointment. There are, as I mentioned, a couple of decent observations that hold right now, in this very moment. But there's no meat. No substance. No narrative. Nothing to chew on. Nothing that keeps you thinking and coming back to it after you're done with it.

48 people found this helpful

Dan Ashton

Poetic and funny

11 August 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

"Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights." - Byrne Hobart from The Diff on "Working in Public".

The book gives a nuanced overview of the many communities and economics of open source, from the idealistic communities of 30 years ago that we usually think about to the modern GitHub era.

"Working in Public" offers a unique lens into the economics and communities of online creatives, tracking open source's evolution from fringe idealism to becoming a ubiquitous utility - while creating trillions in economic value along the way (relatively little of which went to creators).

As work on a project gets less and less fun over time, the book offers creative solutions for incentive problems, ranging from creator monetization features from Twitch, to patronage, to a peer-sourced community, to not maintaining projects to get your attention back - all part of a buffet of emerging options for an economic model stuck in the past that looks like Esports a la 2011.

The book is also witty and funny (my favorite analogy for maintenance was a neighbor who comes and knocks on your doors with requests for how you should put up your Christmas lights), and has a high bar for craft throughout - everything is impeccably well designed, including the cover texture, page weight, and lie flat binding. The same level of craft and precision went into every detail about what was in and out of scope for the book, necessary given how demanding extractive contributors can be (and surely will be about this book!).

Creators first. This book lives that message, from its physical form to its message. Great book!

15 people found this helpful

J. Siegrist

Excellent Overview of Open Source Software

16 August 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

The author has written an excellent account of open source software as it is developed on today. Even though the author is not a developer herself, she seems to have a better grasp of the topic than many developers among the open source contributors and consumers. While no definitive answers are provided in this book on burning questions such as how best to make open source “sustainable”, this book does a magnificent job of framing the pertinent issues and pointing towards the critical few variables that will need to be solved for. More importantly, this book discusses the important relationships around software projects - between maintainers and core non-code contributors, between project members and consumers, between maintainers and their platforms and tools. Given how important open source has become to the software industry, this book is a must read for everyone in either open source communities or in the commercial software development profession.

7 people found this helpful

Joseph F. Heck

Beautiful work I've been waiting years to see, and I'm thrilled it's here!

13 August 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Nadia distills years of the open source movement, overlapping with the growth of social media, into readily understandable terms and highlights not only successes, but failures. In doing so, she makes a path forward achievable for both those wanting to help produce, and who want to consume, these kinds of abundant services without a tragedy of the commons kind of outcome. Well founded insights are wrapped into some thoughtful hypothesis of the road's forward and where they might lead. If you're interested in OSS, how it works, and where it's (likely) going - this is a must-read.

5 people found this helpful

Paul DeVito

Fun read to a degree, but didn’t come out of it with anything actionable

24 September 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Quick read, but can’t say I got anything actionable out of it to help make me a better programmer or OSS maintainer, contributor, and user. Maybe I went into it with the wrong expectations, but wouldn’t necessarily recommend.

3 people found this helpful

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