The economics of open source

I'm sure papers have been written on this but I just had a realization that why I fundamentally like the concept of open source software is that it is basically about sharing and I like the concept of sharing.

Let me give you an example - I just solved a router configuration problem, granted it was a small problem, but by finding a solution probably saved me a couple of hours or more of trying to reconfigure my router from scratch, hoping I could remember every setting I'd previously applied. I tried Googling for an answer first but couldn't find anything but lots of other people posting about the exact same problem I was having and they were pissed-off just like me. As best I can tell they all resorted to the long road and were not happy, mostly at the router manufacturer - DLink.

So after solving my problem I went ahead and posted my solution on Broadband Reports which has a forum specifically for DIR-655. By the way - it is a really great forum for getting network advice of all kinds, lots of really smart people hang out on it. I hope my posting helps other people - I know DLink support read that forum so hopefully they will incorporate the solution I found into their future firmware releases.

All this got me thinking - sharing a solution to a problem is basically the spirit of "open source" - share the instructions of your problem solutions be they steps to take or scripts or other source code. In this case I also shared how I arrived at the solution, in this case some lateral thinking, so I also provided possible solution to future unknown problems - a meta solution.

So this got me thinking about open source and sharing and how so many problems are getting solved and solved quickly these days thanks to sharing of knowledge via Google. All this either just wasn't possible before widely accessible information sharing repositories became available on the Internet. Instead you'd have to go to your library and hope someone had written a solution to the problem, probably years before and there was a book with it available. Or you could write in to a magazine and wait and hope there is someone out there who had already found a solution, possibly taking months. Or you might have to pay some expert who had the knowledge to reveal it to you - or to go find a solution for you probably doing the exact same thing as you would have done, fingers crossed...

All those processes are slow, inefficient and would quite often be fruitless because the information just wasn't out there - posting information or source code online is easy and takes minutes, writing to a magazine or writing a book is a whole different undertaking!

So I'm thinking how much better open source is because it doesn't seek to monetize actual knowledge - by sharing knowledge freely we all get to pull each other up by each others bootstraps and avoid duplication of effort and squandering lives that are spent in ignorance of already solved problems. Doesn't that seem to be a better economic proposition than everyone closely guarding their knowledge, like lords sitting atop of their heavily armored castles trying to repel invaders and keep their fiefdom under their thumbs by force and ignorance?

Sure the downside is we don't get to solely benefit from our intellectual endeavors, but the upside is we get to benefit from the collective endeavors of everyone else. What single person can honestly say the upside in that equation could out weigh the downside for them? And in rejecting that premise aren't they effectively saying that the compensation they will receive for access to their private endeavors will exceed what they have to pay for access to everyone else's? Can that really be true, and if it is doesn't it really outrageously overvalue that individual's contributions? Or am I just in danger of becoming a raging socialist, Marxist or what ever ?-ist might best match my rambling thesis (because I'm sure it is not new thinking).