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It is truly written: the best hacks start out as personal solutions to the author’s everyday problems, and turn out to be typical for others. — Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and The Bazaar
Why are people drawn to collective endeavours online? Why are they giving away crucial information and intellectual property for free? Why are they sharing and working with others, even competitors? Why are profit-focused, power hungry business people being so generous?
Because the age of crass selfishness is dead. The age of the common good is dawning.
Pollyannic fantasy? No.
Look around. Huge companies are being built on software that they not only give away for free, but that they let other companies copy. Rival companies are setting up innovative joint Internet ventures to make their whole industry run more smoothly. Smart companies no longer see their customers as buyers to be duped but rather as a contributors and co-developers in the creation of better products. There is an increasing awareness of the business and political value of pursuing the common good online and of cooperating with those we may have seen as competitors in the past.
Like a grain of salt with that? Fine.
People — and companies — are still motivated by self-interest. By money. By power. By prestige. But the terms on which we pursue what we need and want have changed. In a many-to-many network that emphasizes sharing, everything that you do for yourself has the potential to benefit everyone else. Likewise, anything anyone else does has the potential to benefit you. A piece of software that you write may be exactly what others in your field have been looking for. In a digital environment, sharing this software costs you nothing and earns you a great deal: respect, feedback, and good turns in kind.
Our increased reliance on networks means a new dependence on common infrastructure: tools, data exchange protocols, reference information, the network itself. Each of us needs these tools to succeed and to meet our own goals. But we also have a shared interest in making sure the network not only functions, but constantly improves. We have a common interest in efficiency and ultimately in the collaboration that creates commonspace.
Bring Me the Head of Ayn Rand
In the world of atoms, our economy and culture are driven by the notion of scarcity, where sharing means giving up a precious resource. This has been the reality since, well, forever. But with the emergence of open source and other bit-based commonspace phenomena, this reality is changing. The common good is starting to triumph over scarcity.
Garrett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons,’ which first appeared in 1968, describes the problem of sharing in an atom-based world[1]. We’ll summarize it here, spiced it up slightly to reflect the wonderful world of the new millennium:
A village of farmers holds one field in common, which they use to feed their herds. Each farmer has a herd of equal size, and together, the herds eat exactly all of the