C. J. Silverio - The Economics of Open Source (JSConf EU 2019)

Who?

Github: ceejbot

Project: npm

Why?

C. J. cited two issues that lead them to disengage from npm (leaving his position as CTO of npm inc.) and some other open source projects (which were not specifically named) in JSConf EU 2019. Their main issue was the lack of compensation with open source projects.

“Here’s a fact of the world: servers cost money. Who pays for them? For years, Node manager ran on donated hosting.” (11:24)

They believed the community leadership was questionable and the lack of compensation would give the community no reason to change.

“The management of our commons is opaque to us. It will be opaque to you until the company that owns it has a financial incentive to change it. You don’t know what is happening with your package data.You have to trust it.” (24:31)

Throughout their talk, C. J. continually mentioned companies and larger corporations would have to buy out the project in order for it to survive, thus they believed it was inevitable that contributors, like C. J., leave.

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