Open Source Vs Tech Nation

Hi, I'm zavr and I'm an Open Source developer which is one of the hardest jobs in the world. There's no stable (or any) income, trade union or a social institute of "Open Source" that could provide assistance. We are left to our own devices, yet the whole world capitalizes on our good intentions and inventions. One of companies that thought that it could have its cake and eat it too, is Tech Nation from the UK. They are 80% publicly funded company (£5m annual sponsorship from the ministry of culture) with the aim of encouraging the growth of the tech sector, yet they have not spent a penny to help Open Source developers.

All their programs are directed towards companies that receive vendor capital, and no effort on their part is made to back Open Source, either through education, networking or some kind of mentoring (like simple "come in for a chat") channels. At the same time, they claim to be an "endorsing body" for a prestigious Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa — where they basically require people to work on their "community profile" for free because Tech Nation is not able to understand any technical details and wants the community to do this job for them. Tech Nation has no idea about challenges independent developers face, but at the same time they feel entitled to come up with any random bullshit during the decision process and then hide behind the name of the community.

The Damn Community Profile

The problem I guess is my perception that boards are hostile, especially specialised once. Everyone thinks they are the smartest (I know it's not true but it's kind of true), and you for some reason have to go and prove something to them. Developers especially, they have their own little schemes going on, I don't think they give a crap when you try to explain them something. Internet is not a place where friends chat, not for me. At work, I quit Slack because I hated it. I love to proper talk, or write, but you never find me on Facebook or Twitter. Man I can't even listen to most of whatsapp audios... And I don't think I'm alone in this. Sometimes I get monthly+ no-email streaks because of anxiety of receiving a reply for anything. I'm really afraid of receiving responses because I don't know what they will say, which is not the case in normal conversation when people just talk to you. I might message somebody and then stay away from the phone for a couple of days then realise it's kind of mean and apologize for ghosting, but a few months later. The only nice thing is receiving some claps on medium, they are always safe. That's the only positive thing about the internet. I know things are not so bad, like I found an article on Gizmodo the other day, and there were some really nice thoughtful comments there, but generally subconsciously I'm not fully OK with having any kind of "online profile".

But is it bad? To be honest, a person with a "profile" can receive thousands of likes for a tweet about scratching his arse. People just procrastinate on Twitter, consuming mindless content. Not always, there are tweets that really do help to discover opportunities. Still I prefer to work. I love programming. I love Web Computing. I love Node.JS. I'm fluent in JavaScript and I'm able to communicate my ideas with it. All of my time I spend working on my packages, which I've made 205 in a number of GitHub orgs. I founded a business, that I wanted to be an Open Source company, but Tech Nation wants to kill it, because instead of assessing my JavaScript, they want to assess what I mean for people whom I never met in my life.

Every company has its path, and it starts with prototypes, shaping the proposition, understanding the gap where the business will fit. Creating a product is then followed by growth hacking, that is, acquiring users via marketing. But this is only secondary. You can't start selling what you don't have. It's up to everyone how to work on their business. Why is it different for my Open Source company? If I want to take my time to create something I'm happy with getting out and talking about, I have the right to do so. What Tech Nation said, is that because I didn't go out to boards to talk about my work, which I hadn't finished, I don't qualify. Yet there are 2 key criteria from which one can choose: 1. innovation; 2. community profile. Despite the fact that I didn't choose the second one, because I know my strong sides, and my weaker sides, I was still discriminated against because I'm not known.

But it pisses me off so much. Skill level does not depend on how many people are following you on twitter, or how many downloads you have. For many people, it is their skill that is central to their self-worth, and endorsing bodies in technology need to understand it and appreciate the real effort that people put in. Open Source is not just community. Open Source is open to interpretation and for everyone it can be what they like. For me, it is what allowed me to cope with some really stressful shit in life. When I felt horrible, I knew that I had my laptop, my IDE and my Node, but I didn't have any community. Open Source via GitHub and NPM allowed me not to shut off completely, while also helping to accumulate a portfolio of packages and express creativity in form of package names, tidy documentation styles and innovative ways to write tests. Package making is an artistic process.

A community profile is not taught at university. A community profile is a job of a marketer and I'm not against it, but it's a separate business operation that needs its own approach. After I've formed my essential software products, I can start talking about them through articles and engagements with people. But if Tech Nation wanted to assess my application, they had to look at the quality of code, documentation and tests that I produced, my ideas for the company that I outlined and my other achievements in life such as a degree in Computer Science and AI and in Computer Security and my senior role. Education is extremely expensive, yet I'm told that to receive their endorsement, I need to have a "profile" which is feasible even with "limited experience". **** ***

This approach to applicants is not fair and is bigoted. No one should be discriminated against because of their popularity. But what is more, is that Tech Nation has done nothing to help people who might be like me, to maybe assist in networking or just general support, yet they spend all their time creating reports about the tech sector in the UK, and running programs for Close Source enterprises, which are run by their directors. Tech Nation are bullies who have no respect or kindness to young people in technology industry, and they are using Open Source only for their own aim without giving anything in return. Let's get together and prove them that Open Source is not something that can be invoked to punish Open Source developers who build it.

Any community consists of 1% of people who create and 10% of people who disseminate. The 10% are people with the profile, but the packages that the 1% creates, are much stronger evidence of contribution. NPM does not encourage package creators either, because their search is also skewed towards popularity and a really good package can be on a page 1000. There's also no Open Source office, where everyone can come in and hand in their work. Therefore one is left with trying to find the reddits, newsletters, etc. All my negativity would eventually dissipate when I start doing it and realise it's alright and fun, but I want to prove that it is the skill and actual releases to Open Source that count 10000 more than any tweet by any influencer, and to discriminate against people who contribute their intellectual capacity to Open Source for not being known, is simply unethical.

Since when do geeks have to be social anyway? The point of being a geek is to constantly be in your code, isn't? And then all of a sudden it's this notion that people somehow have to attend meetups and be like normal people. It doesn't work like that. Programming is precisely for avoiding shit like that while being able to justify it with actually creating something useful. I'm not antisocial because that would mean that you can't achieve anything in the world without networking. But it's everyone's right to do what they need to when they need to, you can't blame people for not going on reddit while they are creating packages. It's just really depressing, you're like...

The meme is literally how I feel. I've written 10s of thousands of lines of code, and for some reason told that this code has to be used by people. But WHY. I made it for myself. I love it. It's Open Source. You want to use it? You're welcome. Why do I have to go out of my way trying to make you use it. Freaks me out. Fine it's the job of each artist to find fans however everyone has their own timely strategy. Tech Nation are giving visas to private accelerators without questions asked, but for Open Source, they make you the slave of the community. No, it's my software and it's for me. What kind of socialism is it to make me do stuff for others for free. People on twitch make more money than open sourcers. To build a company from one's Open Source software is everybody's right.

Criteria

There's the guidance document that outlines the criteria (pp 38-40). It asked me to choose 1 key, and 2 mandatory criteria. These are the ones that I picked, with the example of how to achieve them. The Key 2 is given so that you can understand that the guidance clearly distinguished between somebody with a profile, and somebody who's concerned with innovation.

OR (not chosen)

---

---

As you can see, nowhere the guidance explicitly mentions, that I must have had a profile or been known to the community. As I already said above, if I wanted to work on software by implementing and documenting it, and releasing to Open Source, while providing evidence for that in my application, it should had been perfectly acceptable for the application because it's discriminatory otherwise: you cannot ask people for one thing, and then judge them for another. The simple definition of "talent" is as follows: natural aptitude or skill, which is logical for the Tier 1 Exceptional Talent visa. Moreover, the guidance says:

Applicants who choose to apply under the Exceptional Promise criteria are likely to be earlier in their career, and therefore have yet to establish a track record in innovation. This means that they might not have the same levels of experience as those that would be endorsed via the Exceptional Talent criteria, however they will need to be able to demonstrate the potential to be a world leader in digital technology through their skills and achievements thus far.

There's a huge role that an endorsing body should play for young independent developers. After graduating from university, or exiting a career path of working in industry, one will find herself totally alone. The Open Source "community" is imaginary as it's not an official social institute. There are corporations like GitHub, or NPM that supposedly represent Open Source, but these are private companies, in the same way that all conferences are organised by also private companies that dictate their own rules. Interestingly, when you go to npm.community, you will find the following notice: The npm.community forum is now moving into archived mode. The only place anyone can go to is like Reddit. Therefore, if a government is setting up endorsing bodies like Tech Nation, it is their job to provide OFFICIAL public channels that would allow for recognition of work and skill of Open Source developers. There's a huge gap between unorganized internet forums, and an official Open Source program. Yet, Tech Nation is a negligent and hostile organisation that only abuses developers instead by picking on the lack of their "community profile", without appreciating any of this.

WTFPL

Tech Nation think they have the WTFPL license when processing applications, since they are not held accountable to anyone because of the number of people applying to work in technology. The blog post (see top) describes how their Senior Program Manager hijacked my application, and made a decision herself, without any knowledge in the field, because she knew nobody would want to investigate a case of a single developer against the whole of Tech Nation. She's crazy. The review she produced is full of cognitive biases:

I. Bandwagon Effect

Believing or doing something because people around you believe or do it.

She demands of me that my tools must be popular, however the point of showing them to Tech Nation, was to demonstrate that I prepared infrastructure for my company, that will help me deliver new quality software quickly. Popularity is not a measure of skill. If a million people download certain software, it doesn't mean that it's made up to the highest standard and I'll prove it by end of Jan 2020 using an example of a VERY popular Open Source project — you'll watch the video I made and be like, O.M.G.. An endorsing body MUST not be jumping on the usage count bandwagon, while completely skipping the evaluation of the skill required to make those packages.

 II. Dunning-Kruger Effect

Unskilled individuals overestimating their abilities and experts underestimating theirs.

The manager is not an expert in Computer Science and doesn't know anything about software development. Yet, because she think she's seen some number of applications, she can make the decision herself. It is clear from the wording "used a number of frameworks" that she doesn't know what she's talking about, overestimating her ability in processing of the application. Moreover, she says there's no link to the GitHub profile, or that 62 NPM packages is not a track records, which clearly shows that she's not an expert.

III. Confirmation Bias

Seeking and prioritising information that confirms your existing beliefs.

The review was written in response to a request for a review which was sent after the accuracy of the initial decision was questioned. During a meeting with the manager, she verbally expressed a bias, by saying that "thousands of people have done amazing things by younger age", and that Tech Nation will "review the decision but cannot guarantee an endorsement". Language like that clearly demonstrate a prejudice as it is negative: for example, she could've just said, "sir, sorry for such negligent errors, we'll do a review and I hope it'll fix the situation for you".

Action

What's the point of this website? It is to provide a place where the Open Source community can agree with the points raised and put pressure on Tech Nation to accept its fault and apologize to everyone. There are a number of ways to help: