Episode 45: The Meaning of 'Tyranny of Openness' with Nathan Schneider

Sponsored by Linode
Panelists Allen "Gunner" Gunn | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman |
Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer Guest Nathan Schneider University of
Colorado Boulder Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! In this
episode, we have special guest, Nathan Schneider, a Professor of
Media Studies at CU Boulder. He also runs a new little outfit
called Media Enterprise Design Lab. In today’s episode, Nathan will
tell us what he does, how he got to where he is today, and he
explains what he means by, The Tyranny of Openness.” We will also
discuss Democratic Mediums, Platform Cooperativism, and
CommunityRule. Download this episode now! [00:01:24] Nathan tells
us what he does at University of Colorado, Boulder and social.coop.
He’s also running Zoom right now on a Linux machine and he tells us
how he got to where he is today. [00:05:03] Richard wants Nathan to
describe what he means by “The Tyranny of Openness.” [00:07:33]
Justin has been thinking about the Linux Kernel, Python (up until
recently), Ruby, and cURL. They’re all run by BDFL and installed on
billions of devices, so why is that working and in the future, how
should projects at that scale work? [00:11:10] Pia asks Nathan in
his wildest dreams, what would a structure like he was talking
about look like and what tools should we be building? Gunner is
curious and asks if the notion of governance design patterns is
something that’s part of Nathan’s Meta governance? Nathan talks
about an attempt he made to collect patterns, a little directory
called, Democratic Mediums, which was a forerunner to some of this
work. [00:17:54] Richard is curious to know what’s the split in
coders like on a normal GitHub project, because there are people
who would be classified as doers versus people who’d be classified
as decision makers, and how does this work directly into
governance? [00:21:27] Nathan talks about Platform Cooperativism as
a critique of open source. [00:25:08] Nathan discusses about taking
ownership, the big debates happening around Open Source right now
and licensing issues. [00:29:21] Pia asks Nathan to talk about
CommunityRule and his thoughts on it. [00:32:18] Nathan tells where
you could find his work, where you can read his books, and how you
can get involved. Spotlight [00:33:52] Justin’s spotlight is The
Governance Ready Working Group. [00:34:10] Gunner’s spotlight is
Gathering for Open Science Hardware. [00:34:29] Pia’s spotlight is
SaveInternetFreedom.tech [00:35:11] Eric’s spotlight is
Allinone.im. [00:35:27] Richard’s spotlight is Mathias Buus.
[00:35:53] Nathan’s spotlights are The Ethical Source Movement and
System76. Quotes [00:05:04] “You like the phrase of “The Tyranny of
Openness.” [00:05:18] “I guess another annoying habit I have is
that when I love something, I like to criticize it.” [00:09:13]
“But there’s some sophistication there that a lot of our Open
Source projects lack.” [00:09:43] “You know you’re an Admin or not.
Admins can silence people, and you know, have incredible despotic
control over voice.” [00:17:32] “It’s how engineers think. They
want the engineered solution, but you know, politics is very good
at resisting engineers.” [00:24:16] “Microsoft is stepping in and
forking their code and you know, making money off of it. And
they’re like, wait, what’s going on? This is not in line with our
values, but it is in line with their licenses.” [00:25:59] “It’s
sort of like a double-edged sword because you know with the Open
Source licenses as they are defined now, they allow Amazon and
Microsoft to do this.” Links Nathan Schneider
(https://nathanschneider.info/) CommunityRule
(https://communityrule.info/) Social.coop
(https://social.coop/about) Media Enterprise Design Lab
(https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/) Democratic Mediums
(https://democraticmediums.info/) Xkcd-A Webcomic of Romance,
Sarcasm, Math, and Language (https://xkcd.com/927/) The Tyranny of
Openness: What Happened to Peer Production?
(https://osf.io/hnerp/?view_only=44b5c10772d5470892b701dfe4b2c833)
Governance Readiness
(https://sustainoss.org/working-groups/governance-readiness/)
Gathering for Open Science Hardware (http://openhardware.science/)
Save Internet Freedom Tech (https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/)
All-in-One Messenger (https://allinone.im/) Mathias Buus GitHub
(https://github.com/mafintosh) The Ethical Source Movement
(https://ethicalsource.dev/) System76 (https://system76.com/)
Credits Produced by Justin Dorfman (https://www.justindorfman.com/)
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Ad Sales by Eric
Berry Special Guest: Nathan Schneider.