Week 13 Blog 💻

💭 Thoughts on "Makers and Takers" by Dries Buytaert

What things about this article do you agree with?

Whilst reading Makers and Takers by Dries Buytaert, I immediately noted how well-written and concise the article is. Dries Buytaert delves into the theme the article clearly; by drawing comparisons and simplifying complex ideas, he is able to give extremely vivid detail to each term and argument. Upon reading Dries Buytaert’s views, I agree with his ideal of there being “Makers” and “Takers” in the Open Source world. With the accessibility of Open Source, I believe that it is apparent that there are those who will want to give back to, and be involved in, the Open Source community but there will also be others whom use Open Source to their own advantage without giving back what they are taking.

I especially enjoyed reading, and agreed with, the section "Open Source contribution and the Prisoner's Dilemma" because Dries Buytaert makes a relationship between Makers and Takers in an Open Source project and the Prisoner's Dilemma, then moves on to making a comparison between the Prisoner's Dilemma and a real life situation, which made undestanding the concept easier. He expands on how the Prisoner's Dilemma is like washing dishes in a household; if an individual is not washing dishes, that individual can save time (individually rational), but if that behavior is adopted by every person in the house, there will be no clean plates for anyone (collectively irrational). Essentially stating that there needs to be those whom are Makers in the Open Source community, otherwise there will be no gain from there solely being Takers.

What things about this article bother you?

The main point that bothered me about this article was Buytaert’s emphasis on Takers in Open Source projects without giving more context as to the different types of Takers, why Takers are not Makers, and how this can possibly be changed. Although briefly mentioned in the article in the section “Concrete suggestions for scaling and sustaining Open Source”, I think it needs to be highlighted that there are situations in which Takers are Takers only because it is not apparent if an Open Source project needs help with maintenance, as well as, some Open Source projects not having clear guidelines on how and why to give back! Throughout the article, Takers are implicitly given a negative connotation as those who simply do not contribute to Open Source projects but I believe attention should be drawn as to why they do not contribute and how the Open Source community could implement changes that will make for more Makers and less Takers!

🔮 Progress on Gatsby Project:

As of last week, I was working on both Issue #22794 and Issue ##23482. Since Issue #22794 is slightly more difficult and I needed clarification on how to make this a successful contribution, I left a question on the issue so that Gatsby contributors will able to assist me in how to proceed with resolving this issue. I am awaiting a response and plan on making a pull request when I am able to. As for Issue ##23482, I did the necessary research on the issues and resolved it! I have opened up a pull request for this ticket and it was merged! I was super excited to have my first major contribution merged and the maintainers were super kind! The maintainer who reviewed, and merged, my pull request noted that my changes made the Gatsby documentation more readable, clear, and helpful. After my pull request was merged, I was asked to become a maintainer of Gatsby and I was extended an invitation to join the Gatsby Maintainers team! I was unbelievably ecstatic about this and I am looking forward to making further contributions to Gatsby in the future!

📚 Research I Have Done This Week/Contributions:

I have continued reading articles on Open Source this week! My favorite ones included: Determined AI makes its machine learning infrastructure free and open source and Inria releases some source code of French contact-tracing app!

I have made contributions to Gatsby! I am excited about what I have gotten done thus far and will continue to make contributions throughout this following week.