The gift economy at the heart of open source

Cory Doctorow 9:01 am Fri Apr 22, 2016

With the 18th O'Reilly Open Source convention approaching, Tim O'Reilly has written a stirring editorial on the value that inspires him about FLOSS: "to create more value than you capture."

I've volunteered to keynote this year's event, which is in Austin for the first time!

You may have heard me talk about one of O’Reilly’s core values: to create more value than you capture. I learned that principle by watching the pioneers of open source. They created value and gave it as a gift to the world. And today, thousands of independent developers, software teams, and companies contribute to open source projects regularly in an effort to be part of something larger than themselves.

These developers understand that there are unwritten rules that make open work. Open source isn’t a religion—it’s the science of how collaborative development makes better software. We are exploring that science together.

I’m hoping that the independent developers who have made open source—and OSCON—so successful will welcome the new settlers from the enterprise into their communities and teach why the original values of open source still matter. We also want to ensure that OSCON remains a place for the pioneers and innovators to find their community and the encouragement to work on the things that matter.

Putting open source to work
[Tim O'Reilly]

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