My $0.02.

Infrastructure has grown around source code sharing because software
is naturally accretive.  Software has an explicit function: to perform
a set of tasks.  When people collaborate to add source code, the set
of tasks that can be performed by that software multiplies.  There are
also very specific workflows around how source code is added: feature
requests, bug reports, and so on.  Code isn't added to the tree unless
key people (the "upstream maintainers") have determined that the new
code adds value -- and the criteria for acceptance tend towards the
objective (it fixes the bug or it doesn't), although there's certainly
subjectivity there too.  Tools like Github are built to serve those
flows -- and engineers accustomed to using them tend to fit everything
into that flow, because that flow is so incredibly effective in the
context of software.

I believe that content is different.  It's so much less clear whether
one piece of content improves another or not.  The criteria for
"upstream acceptance" seems, to me, to be far more subjective -- with
the likely result that potential contributors don't expend the energy
to "get a patch upstream".

I think a tool like Github may prove to be an interesting way to track
provenance, but it only works if everybody uses it.  And it's so easy
to just cut and paste content, I'm not sure that individuals will be
highly motivated to learn a new tool for the purpose of "pushing
changes upstream."  It's a lot of work, with comparatively little
reward.

--g

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 4:49 PM, J.A.Corneli <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> So maybe I’ve fallen victim to my own observed phenomena, for the sake of a pun. I live and learn.
>
> If so, you made a very interesting choice of pun material.  Consider this quote from http://www.angelfire.com/me2/artgirl/alterton.html :
>
> «In the case of the incident dealing with the pendulum Poe's following of Llorente is even more exact. In both, a prisoner of the Inquisition lies, tightly bound, in the path of a slowly descending pendulum. In both, the prisoner endures mental agony, as he eyes the keen-cutting edge, coming nearer and nearer. Both descriptions dwell on a threatened slow-cutting process. In Llorente, the pendulum was to cut "the skin of the nose and gradually" to cut on "until life is extinct." In Poe the pendulum is to cut through the region of the heart. In both, the prisoner is rescued from this particular torture. Poe has here strictly adhered to the outline of horrors found in the Llorente material. He, however, vivifies the bare outline by adding to it painful sensations of sound, smell, taste, and color. For example, he points the rod of the pendulum with a flashing steel crescent and thus describes its descent as it "hisses through the air." [...] The foregoing evidence shows Poe's manifest dependence on the Llorente material for the opening and closing scenes in his story, as well as for the horrible incident dealing with the pendulum.»
>
> Moral: people have been "sharing" (borrowing, stealing, improving... whatever you want to call it -- since forever.  Indeed "simple tech is all they need to get started" (Scott Leslie).  But for huge multitudes of reasons, it seems woefully inadequate to "just share" without "understand[ing...] more about individuals' interconnecting workflows" (Lorna Campbell).
>
> Scott's rhetorical use of dichotomy is interesting: "We share with people, they share with 'Institutions'" (etc.).  The key quote:
>
> «The institutional approach, in my experience, is driven by people who will end up not being the ones doing the actual sharing nor producing what is to be shared.»
>
> That's the heart of what David Boud and Alison Lee term the "provisionist" approach to higher education, in what I think to be a really essential paper [1].  But as Scott continues, the notion of “levels” (and thus dichotomies) starts "to get a bit woobly" when we consider sharing as the *natural state* of humans, the question being what is shared, and how.
>
> Indeed, why should we think that "sharing" is in some way "special" or "exceptional" or even interesting?  Isn't it rather the opposite, that any mechanisms that are in place to prevent sharing are the strange and interesting exceptions (from the human point of view)?  Particularly since these mechanisms are often embodied in "simple tech" (e.g. the classic examples are walls and fences; a contemporary example would be copyright and licenses).
>
> I would suggest to go beyond Lorna's call to understand interconnecting workflows, but really to try and understand interconnecting resource landscapes in a deep way (including for example, play, waste, non-human factors, etc.).  I think this can only be done by the people "doing the sharing and producing" -- but, this time, without dichotomizing.  As Walt Kelly put it, we have met the enemy, and he is us.
>
> [1]: Boud, D. and Lee, A. (2005). ‘Peer learning’ as pedagogic discourse for research education. Studies in Higher Education, 30(5):501–516.
>
> PS. Happy Independence Day (US).
>
> --
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