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Why Open Source Works

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 10 months ago

 

Yochai Benkler: Open-source economics

(Yochai Benkler has been called "the leading intellectual of the information age." He proposes that volunteer-based projects such as Wikipedia and Linux are the next stage of human organization) See it at :Open Source Talk At TED

 

A Review:

Aaron BrowneApril 20 2008
 

A great presentation on  Open-source economics.

 

 

It is hard to deny the disruption being caused by open source ideology and community values. In no way am I anti-corporation but when my freedom to use and participate is taken away from me by a corporation, then I push back.

 

 

We can argue about who copied from who and who innovated first but you have to realize that sharing these ideas is the cornerstone of the progression of civilization. Locking all ideas up inside a capitalist boiler room does not work and stifles innovation in pursuit of profit. What would a university be without sharing of ideas and information? Many of the concepts and ideas you mention were thought up and fostered at Universities a long time before NT arrived. Unix being a prime example.

 

 

Imagine that all code in the world was open. We wouldn't re-invent the wheel many different ways in every different business. Everything that I contribute as a volunteer or paid programmer is automatically there for the benefit of everyone. In the same way, I have access to all code written by everyone else. It just works. Problems are solved, people work towards higher goals and aspirations and solve bigger problems.

 

 

You can monetize via support, implementation and feature enhancements. As Yochai said, there is no one blueprint that can explain everything I know. This is where an expert can expect to make money. The amount of money is determined by how valuable the support, implementation or feature is for the people responsible for writing the cheque.

 

 

Open source makes sense. So many corporations are now following suit. The old guard of holdout proprietary companies will eventually fall under pressure from the community at large..

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