Karl Fogel

In Working in Public, Fogel supplies the conceptual definition of ownership that the book uses to characterize open source. A coauthor of the version-control system Subversion (described in the book as a centralized predecessor to Git), he draws a distinction between two senses of the word “my”: the possessive (“that’s my bike,” “those are my shoes” — we own them and have the final say) and the associative (“that’s my father,” “my sister” — we’re associated with them but obviously don’t possess them). His claim, quoted directly: “In open source, you can only have ‘my’ in the associative sense. There is no possessive ‘my’ in open source.” This frames the book’s broader argument that maintainers are associated with, but do not own, the communities and codebases around their projects.

The book also credits Fogel as “a thoughtful, and in my view underrated, voice of early open source culture,” and the author of “the only notable book to date on the production of open source”: Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project (first published 2005, available in full at producingoss.com).

Context: Karl Fogel is an American free-software developer and writer, a coauthor of Subversion, and the author of Producing Open Source Software. He has been a long-time advocate for open-source project management and digital civic infrastructure.

Where this appears

• Working in Public — the possessive-vs-associative “my” distinction used to define ownership in open source; cited as author of Producing Open Source Software and a Subversion coauthor.