This is not something intrinsic in the nature of open source, but in how humans like to spend their free time. Of course we could all be much more efficient if we all had the same goals, but that's not how things work in a free society.
As a society we win big by collaboration in the first place. Not by diversity, disagreeing with other people and doing everything "your way". Imagine 1000 independent people trying to build Boeing in an opensource way.
Labor has negative utility. You have to compensate if you want people do labor.
In a business setting, you pay people.
In a hobby setting like that, people compensate by having fun.
Either approach is compatible with producing open-source software; I suspect most LOC of open-source projects are written by salaried contributors at large corporations.
What a bizarre argument. 1,000+ independent people trying their hand in the business world is ultimately how a Boeing is conceived. That is the extreme diversity that benefits society.
I didn't quite get it. Do you mean that Boeing is built by independent people who work on whatever they want to and then a plane is assembled of that independently built parts and no one takes the responsibility of the result? Or you mean that Boeing is subcontracting particular work to independent firms serving as architect, coordinator, and sponsor and taking all the responsibility?
> "Do you mean that Boeing is built by independent people who work on whatever they want to and then a plane is assembled of that independently built parts and no one takes the responsibility of the result?"
Somewhere in the middle. If you consider the work that goes into making a plane, you'll see quite a bit of it happens outside Boeing. To give one example, think of the aluminium that goes into the plane. Boeing doesn't have to mine bauxite, extract the aluminium from the bauxite, transport it to the place where its sold, etc...
A classic example of this ground-up view was this example given by Milton Friedman about the pencil. I don't agree with many of his views, but I think he makes a good point in this video:
Great video, thank you! Yes, most of the work is done outside of Boeing, but it is done specially for Boeing, not that people work on whatever sort of aluminum they want but they know Boeing demand and supply them with the particular sort. On the other side Boeing pay them money so they can proceed to mine. This is what I mean under the collaboration.
"On the other side Boeing pay them money so they can proceed to mine."
Perhaps you know more about Boeing's business arrangements than me, but I certainly couldn't verify that that's true. From what little I know, it's possible Boeing's aluminium suppliers work exclusively for Boeing, but it's also possible these same aluminium suppliers have multiple customers. The point being, there could be people who work as part of the chain to produce and transport the aluminium who have no idea who will eventually use it.
