The attached paper is a good read regarding concepts of open source.
Pages 15-16 have an especially cogent summary of what make open source
work. And page 20's "Powerful non-monetary incentives" section is
right at the heart of what I've been marveling over regarding open
source communities (which, in my mind, includes Burning Man[*]).
Finally, here's my own soapbox statement: The key shift in
understanding that will move us toward open source as a society is the
concept that intellectual products are wealth in and of themselves, and
not a means of generating wealth in the form of money. There's nothing
wrong with money, it's just that having, e.g., Linux, is priceless.
The large corporations probably know this better than anyone, and
attempt to lock down intellectual products (as property), to the
long-term detriment of all but the short-term gain of a few. They
convince us that this is the correct course of action by the following
false tenets:
1. Only a large corporation has the focus and energy to provide
what the community needs.
2. More will be produced through centralized control and
ownership.
These statements are both false, and successful open-source projects
like Linux provide clear counterexamples.
I'll go way out on a limb and make the following claim: the wealth of a
company like Microsoft is a direct indication of the value they have
subtracted from the community they hold captive. As support, I offer
my own experience since escaping Microsoft server products and adopting
Linux: much higher productivity, superior performance, and the ability
to accomplish things I would not be able to accomplish had I stayed
captive.
Exit soapbox....
-Ed.
Sources:
http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/wideopen/
http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/05/04/21/1419202.shtml?
tid=95&tid=146&tid=219
--
[*] Burning Man: see LadyBee's curator's statement:
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