You've certainly pointed out some really important issues here, and thanks for flagging this post on the P2P Loomio thread. In the spirit of straight shooting, I'd like to question your initial assumption, that

the primary reason people get together in open and collaborative projects is to achieve something, not to have fun

Maybe the dialogue could go forward through looking carefully at the term "reason". Many people take "reason" in this context to mean something more like "motivation", in which case the claim would look false — while some people are motivated by outcomes, others are motivated primarily by well-being, or more simply "feeling good".

I think there's another sense of the term "reason" which may give different results. If you mean something to do with "necessary rationale" (I'm struggling for terms that communicate well here) one could make out the case that projects have to support themselves (including financially) in order to continue to provide the well-being that people want. I've also seen, in several places, some version of this threefold purpose to a good organisation:

1. make a difference
2. have fun
3. make enough money to support aims 1 and 2

which makes more complete sense to me.

Related to what you write here, I would say that organisations need a balance of thinkers and feelers, of production and well-being, and perhaps several other common polarities. Organisations, like people, need something like wholeness to be healthy and long-lived. Sure, put in a corrective, as you are doing, when one side is over-emphasised; but please try to point out at the same time that both sides are vital. There is no wholeness without both sides being present.

So, to me, the key challenge in this situation is: how do we collectively manage a positive relationship between the two "sides"? Where the two sides value and appreciate each other, all will be well. When they fight for dominance, all may be lost.

I would love to engage with a proper forum (more than a comment thread) to pursue this dialogue. "Distributed Network Protocols" is not the right place, even though that is where I picked this up from. I also very much appreciate personal one-to-one dialogue.

"asimong" Simon Grant