I was thinking about the way economic incentives work and a potential contradiction emerges with open source. Economics tells us that innovations are done for monetary or other economic gain. This does not necessarily occur with open source, as the innovations must be kept open for other people to use as they wish. There is the idea of public goodwill, in which offering ideas freely to each other does create value indirectly. This is quite confusing to understand at this time because it would appear that the open source community follows an economic activity model very different from capitalism or socialism.
If this contradiction were true, open source would be a very small movement that would not garner significant attention in society. Alas, this is not the case, as most of the Internet incorporates some open source software. Large corporations are adopting Linux as well. Clearly there are new laws of production at work here that are difficult to grasp.
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1 comment:
Kris-
This is great. The blog is coming along nicely, and thanks for adding the hyperlinks in.
I agree with this post in that it is difficult to conceptualized the incentives for conducting open source research and development. Jason, immer pessimistisch, thinks that open source will one of many of the upcoming ruins of the US economy. He argues, how can the US compete in an arena of ideas, where the ideas are freely exchanged and can be developed by anyone, anywhere? While as for me, immer optomistisch, see open source as more of a driver for better development and competition among ideas. I don't have it all sorted out either though.
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