In the gift economies to which F/LOSS is often compared, gifts are given to create ties and obligations among people. But in F/LOSS, code was just as readily given away as a way of cutting ties.

Community members are decidedly not free to build ties that might oblige others to explain themselves, which is exactly what women’s groups do, and exactly why they are considered problematic. If someone does not like being in one software project, the accepted course of action is to simply start another project elsewhere, not create an obligation for that community to include you. This particular form of exchange means that others can push the technology along further only as individually willful agents who have taken it upon themselves to ‘read the f *** uck ing manual.’