Opinion: Open Source Projects and the Meritocracy Myth

Posted by Sander_Marechal on Dec 3, 2009 5:58 AM EDT
Datamation; By Bruce Byfield
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"This is not a democracy, it's a meritocracy." The statement comes from the Ubuntu Governance page, but you can find similar statements in the Fedora Release Notes, the Why Debian For Developers page, and just about anywhere else were free and open source software (FOSS) projects discuss their core values. The idea that FOSS is a meritocracy is equivalent to the idea that America is the land of opportunity, or that scientists are objective. For members of the FOSS community, the idea that hard work is rewarded with recognition and the opportunity for more responsibility is central to their belief system and their sense of who they are.

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