Leigh has been asking me for ages to write about open source and sustainability. There are a zillion pages about open source and sustainability but almost without exception they are solely about the long term viability of open source (either as a business model or maintainability of code). I would really really like to see some discussion of open source that considers wider sustainability beyond this extremely narrow interpretation.
So, I am very pleased that TED has released this talk by Yochai Benkler . While not explicitly considering sustainabilty, he does talk about macro economic effects, empowerment and democratisation – all the sort of thing that we need to build a real picture of open source sustainability. More please…
April 20, 2008 at 10:28 am
Great you have found Yochai. We reference him a lot in our courses. I brought in a copy of his book Wealth of Networks to Billy Bob library. But its available on his wiki and no doubt developed since the book was published
April 20, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Leigh, The problem is that the Open Source community doesn’t appear to know about Yochai Benkler. Do a search for “open source sustainability” on google: except for a few lost hits sneaking in from treehugger, Make etc, I can’t find a reference to holistic sustainability (ie beyond business viability) for the first few pages at least.