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roggenbucktoday at 5:46 PM1 replyview on HN

Hey Eric!

How often do you see companies recover from financial gravity? Or is it mostly irreversible?

How much do you attribute worsening of company values to things like professional managers, too much hierarchy, and less founder-mode; versus financial gravity?

In a case like GitHub where their focus seems less on open-source these days, should developers try to help GitHub better support open-source or should the focus be on building alternatives?

Thanks, Jake


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eriestoday at 5:52 PM

You've framed this question as if these things are separate phenomena, but from my point of view, they are all symptoms of the same underlying cause. The sad truth is that, as I say in the book, "It's always too early until it's too late." The truth is we don't ever know if something is too late until we try. If you love an organization and you think you have the opportunity to try to help them get better, go for it. If you decide they've abandoned their ethos, I definitely think you should help support and build the alternative.

For reasons I try to explain in the book, open source in particular is an example of the kind of mission-driven positive externality type of business that our modern best practices make it hard for people to see and understand. This is going to be a recurring problem in the free software and open source movements for years to come unless we get smarter about these forces.

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