Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Modern Open Source Software

Eghbal's book is the most important work on open source published in the last decade. She argues that GitHub fundamentally changed the economics of open source by making contribution frictionless while leaving maintenance costs untouched, creating an asymmetry that burns out maintainers. The book introduces a taxonomy of open-source communities — federations, clubs, toys, and stadiums — based on contributor growth versus user growth, replacing the romantic image of the bazaar with a more realistic map. Eghbal draws on research into online communities, public goods economics, and her own extensive interviews with maintainers to show that the crisis of open source is structural, not motivational. The analysis extends naturally to any platform where creators produce for an audience they cannot control. For product leaders who depend on open-source infrastructure — which is nearly all of them — this book explains why the foundations beneath your product are more fragile than they appear.