intertwingly

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Forcing Leaders Into Benevolence


Jason Hunter: There’s a powerful dynamic that applies to leaders of open source projects due to the threat of external forking. It forces leaders into benevolence because anyone at any time can take the same source code you have and compete with you. Imagine if corporate companies had to work that way. How responsive they’d be! Imagine if companies couldn’t use patents and copyright law to retain customers. That’s what open source projects live with.