I love Anime Conventions. I just got back from ACEN (which rocked). I had the pleasure of attending a very interesting panel by one Dan Kanemitsu on convention culture around the world.
One of the things he impressed on the audience was that in other parts of the world, particularly at Comiket in Japan, the primary purpose of the convention is the distribution of doujinshi, self published works particularly in the form of books (novels, manga, art books, etc.). Obviously these cons contain many other events too, but there is a deep culture around producing and circulating self published work that is not as well established in the US.
During the Q&A someone asked why he thought this culture was prominent in Japan but not in the US. Dan answered that this subject was both complex and contentious, and that he didn’t have time for the full treatment, but he proceeded to speak a bit about what draws Japanese fans to doujinshi publishing. He explained that in Japan, at one point in time, it was quite difficult and formal to have a corporate publisher carry your work. Doujinshi made for a niche and experimental distribution network, a place where creators operated outside the strictures of of PR departments and style guides.
On the writers side there’s a clear allure to complete creator freedom. Even popular commercial artists will sometimes also publish doujinshi either for material that their publisher isn’t interested in or material that they simply would rather produce without the strictures of a full print run. For consumers as well, the effort to search outside of established distribution channels is worth it because of the opportunity to get a focused artistic vision. So despite the fact that on the whole relatively few doujinshi publishers turn a profit at big events, they remain extremely popular both for creators and consumers.
I was intrigued somewhat by this idea, particularly as it applies to open source development. I’m not any kind of big FOSS maintainer but I’ve hung around the fringes for years and kicked in the occasional PR to big projects. It struck me that much of what is on GitHub and the like is still designed to attract the attention and approval of corporate interests. Success looks like hundreds and then thousands of stars, a council of maintainers, a roadmap, a public security audit, integrations with other even larger and more prestigious projects. A project must do more than simply function, if it does not grow in popularity it is looked at as somewhat of a failure.
I must admit I’m easily swayed by this mindset too. Some of the contributions I’m proud of were not terribly significant, but were to popular projects whose name I think people would recognize (I fixed an error message line in golang.org/x/crypto!). Other projects I find myself wishing that other people would come by and engage with it, and in the process probably bore my friends by linking them the same little script a half dozen times.
I think that perhaps the open source community, in which I dare to include myself, would be well served by embracing a bit of the culture of doujinshi. Collaboration and growth and communal work are important, but so too is appreciating unapologetic creativity. Not every half finished web app or personal cli tool is a diamond in the rough, but some of the most impressive and beautiful and ultimately valuable works have at their core that kernel of self-interested creativity. At times we need to be more comfortable creating without wondering in advance who’s going to want it.