Is loss aversion alive in OSS?

“Turns out that most of us don’t like losing. In fact, it’s what the academics call loss aversion. We feel the pain of loss more acutely than we feel the pleasure of gain. In other words, we may like to win, but we hate to lose.”
Carl Richards here on NYTimes.

If you’ve ever worked at a large Telco, you’ll have noticed their ability to accumulate OSS tools. They seem to be able to take on a project that implements new tools, built on business cases that require the removal of a few old ones. Out with the old, in with the new. But more often than not it turns into a case of “in with the new, but we just can’t bear to lose the old.”

Sounds like a classic case of loss aversion to me. 🙂

Here’s a link that describes the imbalance of loss aversion on Psychology Today.

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