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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
To be more specific Graph.global was huge for seeing first interface where you could treat [conor friends-with mek] and treat that as object to build new relationships on [Conor friends with mek] due to [Belief in Memex]
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Mek
@mekarpeles
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Ill be first to admit that both @mc2 and @jacobCole4000 were enormous inspirations which encouraged me in to create graph.global (open source) in 2015: github.com/w2g/graph.glob
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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
Notion deserves credit for a lot too, especially with respect to UI --
@ccorcos
deserves much more credit than Notion though, because project that got him job at Notion (markdown parser that allowed arbitrary React components) solved HUGE bottleneck 4 us.
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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
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For years I've been working on a Doug Engelbart style "Dynamic Knowledge Repository" @NotionHQ beat me to it. Try it notion.so/invite/twitter
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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
Just the idea of it. Whether or not code was open source was totally irrelevant. Had 10 minute conversation with him about the side project, with a few days, got up in middle of night and built {{[[TODO]]}} and {{[[DONE}}, which opened door for {{diagram}} and {{table}}.
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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
Fact that you could combine single markdown escape hatch for arbitrary display / interactivity - from
@ccorcos
And STILL build off all the filter and backlinks power Roam already had... That was the novel insight Chet inspired {{todo}} Rich hickey inspired {{[[TODO]]}}
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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
So much of the hard work in design comes with figuring out details of the workflow and conceptual model - often only by months of working with users. Open sourcing actual code for consumer tools is red herring, ignores other contributions to commons
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Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🔍🇺🇸
@Conaw
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Replying to @mekarpeles @RoamResearch and @AthensResearch
Open source was totally irrelevant - at least for me. Never needed to read your code, definitely was never going to use. What mattered was you pushed the conceptual frontier.
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Mek
@mekarpeles
I agree there are many valuable forms of contribution: One not needing a resource is not grounds for justifying it be closed. The world is built on resources I, in my privileged position, don't need and which others do. All things equal; show work, share, & enable.
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
I sympathize with Conor here—it's already so hard to get a tool like this off the ground; adding more constraints (i.e. on production flywheel) seems like asking for trouble. I love that we've found some models that work (e.g. open core); I'd love to see a playbook collection.
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
I struggle with this in my own work. It's obvious that if it's to succeed in the long term, Orbit wants to be an open standard with OSS implementations. But it's also obvious that there are enormous path dependencies; it's not at all clear when and how it's best to move to open.
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Mek
@mekarpeles
I wonder if this is getting into the core of copyright; defining an equitability function between content producers and creators. And the nature of fairness as it pertains to recurring revenue and monopoly.
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Mek
@mekarpeles
Replying to
@andy_matuschak
@Conaw
and 3 others
Would your answer change if we were talking about academic research? Where the work is material to the final product? Is there an inflection along the gradient where closing source is better for users? Because e.g. the org is more focused?
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
What matters is whether sufficient funding is available to produce the insights you care about. In some domains (often tools for thought because of insight-through-making), this requires funding a $$$-skills team for years. If an academic grant lets you do that, great—OSS away.
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