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What it argues
Working in Public is Nadia Eghbal's examination of open source software as a window into a broader shift in how creative and technical work is organized online. Published in 2020 by Stripe Press, the book started as a research report Eghbal wrote at GitHub and grew into a full account of what open source has become — not the collaborative utopia its early advocates envisioned, but something stranger and more instructive.
Eghbal's key observation is that the standard mental model of open source — a community of contributors working together toward a shared goal — describes only a minority of projects. Most successful open source software is maintained by one person or a very small group, with a large periphery of users who consume the work but rarely contribute to it. She introduces a taxonomy of project types: federations (many contributors, high user growth), clubs (many contributors, low user growth), stadiums (one or few contributors, high user growth), and toys (one or few contributors, low user growth). The stadium is the dominant form: a single maintainer, often overwhelmed, serving a massive user base.
What it gets right
- 1.
Most open source software is maintained by one person or a tiny group, not by the large collaborative communities that the open source mythology suggests.
- 2.
Eghbal's taxonomy identifies four project types by contributor count and user count: federations, clubs, stadiums, and toys. The stadium — one creator, massive audience — is the dominant and most problematic form.
- 3.
The cost asymmetry between producing and consuming explains free-riding. Filing a good bug report or submitting a pull request costs far more than starring a repo. Most users rationally choose the cheap option.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Nadia Eghbal (now Nadia Asparouhova) is a researcher and writer who spent several years at GitHub and the Ford Foundation studying open source software and its economics. Working in Public began as a report she wrote for GitHub on the state of open source maintainership and was expanded into a book published by Stripe Press in 2020. She has also written on philanthropy, internet culture, and the economics of creative work. Her research on open source sustainability helped establish the conversation about maintainer burnout and the free-rider problem in software infrastructure that has since become a mainstream concern.
