Understanding people and their motivations
In an interview, I was asked what the best and worst parts of open source are. In a somewhat knee-jerk and cheeky way, I responded, “The people.” My response was in no way meant to be derogatory but more of a reflection of the central role of people in the success and failure of open source projects.
To understand people, you have to understand how they think. Let’s take a quick dive into understanding the human brain.
The human brain
The human brain is a complex beast, controlling how we live, learn, react, and execute. What is most interesting is that different parts of the brain control different functionalities, as we can see in Figure 8.1:
Figure 8.1: A breakdown of regions of the human brain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cerebrum_lobes.svg)
Each section of the brain is connected to the other in many ways, and these connections are grown and weakened over time. Some...
