Open Source as Catalyst for Industry Quality and Business Principles

Key Quotes

"literally everything that we have ever built has been built on top of open source so even though we make a bunch of open source software we only make that and we're only able to make that because everything beneath it is open source we use the linux operating system for many many years we used to just on the server and now we also use it on our developer platforms or our developer laptops we use open source databases we use open source pretty much everything open source programming language ruby"

David Heinemeier Hansson explains that 37signals' entire software development foundation relies on open source technologies. This highlights the symbiotic relationship where the company benefits from open source and, in turn, contributes its own open source projects.

"I think open source has simply just opened the doors to so many more people to be able to create things and get going before there's any economic activity or value to what they do but I think it also goes even deeper than that I just I love being able to see how things work I love being able to take something apart and inspect it and learn from it and open source allows that better than anything else"

Jason Fried elaborates on the democratizing effect of open source, enabling more individuals to build and innovate without initial financial barriers. He also emphasizes the inherent value of transparency, allowing for inspection and learning, which is a core tenet of open source development.

"when people can see your code you tend to just make it a little bit better you care about how it's laid out you care about how you do it you care about the techniques that you use because there's no secrets like everyone can see how you're doing it and I remember way back in the day when I was making websites I took a lot of pride in basically tabs and spaces you know and lining things up in a certain way that just looked good and I think it built good habits in me to care about that"

Jason Fried discusses the impact of public visibility on code quality, likening it to a form of "hygiene." He explains that knowing others can inspect one's work encourages meticulousness and pride in craftsmanship, fostering better development habits.

"it's about as high flying kumbaya as you can get but it also it's easy in my opinion to do that even from a commercial perspective because it feels like it's free in fact it feels like it's better than free for all the reasons jason says when you up your game and you take more care and effort to make something really nice like you're paying yourself dividends and then that everyone else also get to get the dividends from that and in return just feels like such an additive process like the best of what commercial software development can be that it has these positive externalities"

David Heinemeier Hansson argues that open sourcing software, even from a commercial standpoint, is highly beneficial. He suggests that the effort put into making code high-quality for public consumption yields dividends through improved internal practices and positive external contributions to the industry.

"we really questioned that with fizzy not because we were the first to question this paradigm there have been others who've done similar thing where they've released their entire product as open source and then they've tried to commercialize it in a variety of ways so in that regard this isn't pioneering some new deep dish here others have done it but for us it was definitely a bit of a barrier to think that there's a project we're doing here that's not just done as a free we're just going to give it away thing we're going to try to commercialize it we're going to try to make a sas version of it"

David Heinemeier Hansson explains the novel approach with Fizzy, where the entire product is open source while also being offered as a SaaS product. He acknowledges that this model isn't entirely new but represents a significant shift for 37signals, challenging their previous approach to open source.

"I think a lot of people would find the osassy license more fitting having more freedom for their particular use case than the gpl does so some of this is I think is just like nerds being nerds and pedantic some of it is legitimate old historic battles that maybe someone is still traumatized by the 90s and fighting off microsoft and oracle tried to destroy things and then some of it is also just people being pissy on the internet and finding fault with every goddamn thing that ever existed including looking a freaking gift horse in the mouth"

David Heinemeier Hansson addresses criticism regarding Fizzy's license, suggesting that the "osassy" license offers more freedom for many users than traditional licenses like the GPL. He attributes some of the backlash to pedantry, historical anxieties about corporate interference in open source, and general online negativity.