Software Kingdoms

The widespread perception of open source is that it’s community work. Looking back at the first heyday of open source in the 90s, you picture these loosely organized, squabbling, collaborative efforts between a closely-knit group of nerds. Some special technology, notably Linux, emerged from that era as evidence that self-motivated teams of volunte... See more

Here again, Eghbal provides a framework that transcends the open-source context that inspired it. In a digital economy, goods are either excludable or not (meaning paywall-able, essentially), and rivalrous or not (meaning infinitely copyable at zero marginal cost or not). The resulting 2 × 2 matrix describes just about every way to make a buck onli... See more

Like the idea that open source software just isn’t “sustainable”. That unless we somehow find a new way to force users to “give back” (i.e. pay/donate!), we’re going to burn out people who donate their “free labor”, but won’t do so forever.