Open source projects tend to be remote-first simply because there is no budget for an office.
Why does this seem to work for open source to a greater extent than for tech companies?
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My sense is that the creative conception phase of a project (and subsequent definitional shaping) is most weakened by remote collab. Most open source work is about execution, maintenance, incremental improvement—which can more easily happen remotely.
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The creative conception in OSS often happens solo, or in a small tight-knit group, prior to the apparent “main” lifetime of the project.
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Is that true, or is it that open source projects tend to be CLI-driven...and so what you're creatively collaborating on is text vs images, and so that's easier to work on remotely?
If can identify the active ingredient here, that might help with "remoting" existing cos.
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re: Open Source and CLI. Notable exceptions include Blender and OBS, both desktop GUI tools for creative professionals that provide stiff competition to proprietary alternatives (former) or are standout market leaders in their category (latter). AFAIK, both fully remote.
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Both are very valuable tools, but (and correct me, please!) each seems to be an open-source implementation of a well-understood software paradigm. How much creative conception is involved?
That’s a fair point. I’m not expert enough in 3D modeling to speak to how much of Blender’s creative conception is or isn’t “let’s make an open source clone of Maya” (e.g., gimp::photoshop) but in the case of OBS, it seems like it dominates a category it largely defined.
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I’d argue that a lot of what existing organizations could improve upon is remote (or not!) execution, and either of those projects are good examples of non-CLI/non-Infrastructure OSS that are worth examining through that lens.