When I accept a friend's hospitality and don't reciprocate, I am taking their time and resources. When I take five free samples at the store, I ruin it for others who come later.
When I download an open source GitHub repo, I am burning 1¢ of Microsoft's money.
If nobody pays for that cost, then the work will never get done in the first place, and we won't have these resources.
While the other examples seem good for illustrating the point, this one has it backwards I think. Microsoft worked very hard to be in this position. They did this on purpose and this aspect is essential to their success:
- GitHub did everything they could to capture the market by being free to use and by leveraging the network effect
- Microsoft bought GitHub at a point where it was already widely successful in this aspect, so they fully knew what they were buying
Capturing the whole open source market is part of their business model. I don't like they've done this and I don't get to choose where authors host their code. Even the authors themselves might not have felt free to choose something else because of the network effect. It's only fair Microsoft pays for the privilege. GitHub being free is a feature for Microsoft.
> When I accept a friend's hospitality and don't reciprocate
I came to realize that you don't need to return the favor specifically to the person who helped you. Things work as long as you help anybody. The loop will be closed by someone who will eventually help the person who helped you (or has in the past). Actually, it doesn't events need to be a loop. This is very powerful and quite relaxing because you can be chill both for helping and for receiving help, and it has the potential of working very well and be very enjoyable.
In short: take (from anybody) as long as yougive (to anybody)
(Of course, in a friendship, some reciprocity is necessary, if things only go one way, it doesn't work)
Another pithy way people express this is with "pay it forward" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward
Perhaps my definition is off? If so I would appreciate a pointer about the correct terminology.
I suppose it might be different in the case of a one-time fork. It still seems like there's an ethical obligation to contribute back if you are well off and you benefit from something. I think there's a meta, societal level tragedy of the commons to be found there. But if you aren't actively benefiting from maintenance efforts then perhaps it doesn't qualify as a direct tragedy of the commons.