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Capitalize start of sentence #1

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Expand Up @@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ They were doing something else. They were exchanging gifts with their peers in a

The native American people of the Northwest Pacific Coast of the US and Canada had an economic practice that was based on *giving* gifts rather than receiving gifts. They called their practice [potlatch](~~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch~~) . Potlatch as a social system was violently suppressed by Western colonizers, but the word stays with us, because the urge is a human thing. Potlatch as a motivation is what brings us here, because it motivated the people who put on this conference as well as many of its speakers. Potlatch culture was early node culture, when people chasing their own interests shared software libraries with each other to make everybody’s node programs work better.

There’s a little potlatch urge in every open source project announced by humans who did it it on their own, not supported by any company. this particular modern expression of potlatch culture isn't getting violently suppressed. Capitalism loves this one! Why? Well, because it’s found a way to weaponize it against us. The weaponization is Eric Raymond style open source.
There’s a little potlatch urge in every open source project announced by humans who did it it on their own, not supported by any company. This particular modern expression of potlatch culture isn't getting violently suppressed. Capitalism loves this one! Why? Well, because it’s found a way to weaponize it against us. The weaponization is Eric Raymond style open source.

You are likely aware of the difference between _free software_ — Richard Stallman style— and _open source_ — Eric Raymond style. Stallman's GNU license aims to require users of shared source code to give what they build with it away freely as well. Or at least to give their code away freely. We can argue about whether the GNU license achieves that goal or not, and people do argue about that at length. I don’t want to rehash the question here. I will merely observe that ESR’s style of open source, where you give away code with permissive licenses, is the style that has won. It’s _most likely_ the style that you practice-- you probably use "permissive" MIT & BSD licenses on your software, and you treat the GPL like poison.

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