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Musing about artificial scarcity

The Because Effect is all about understanding abundances and scarcities. Any firm that truly understands the abundances and the scarcities of a given economic era is bound to prosper, as Gilder noted many years ago.

Opensource is all about The Because Effect, and is a means of making abundant things that were previously scarce. Abundance that is underpinned by licensing models that prevent artificial scarcity.

Which is why this post by David Wallace is worrying; while I’d heard of a few cases over the years, this example brings it home. While I don’t know all the facts, what is clear is that we need to spruce up our capacity to support and protect opensource contributors. Theory is fast moving into practice here. Doc? Don? Any advice for Dave the LifeKludger?

We have a lot to learn about abundance. How to fund it. How to make sure it stays abundant, how to protect the abundance. How to make money from it without reverting to the corruption of lock-in. I am particularly intrigued by Larry Lessig’s work on CC Zero and CC Plus.

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Posted in Because Effect, Opensource.

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By JP – February 25, 2008

  • http://zgp.org/~dmarti Don Marti

    It’s possible that the photodropper people hired a contract developer to write the software, and the developer either cut a corner on the license or didn’t understand his or her responsibilities under the GPL. The real dispute here might be between the developer and photodropper.

  • http://www.annezelenka.com/2008/02/links-for-2008-02-25 Anne Truitt Zelenka » links for 2008-02-25

    [...] Musing about artificial scarcity | confused of calcutta “Any firm that truly understands the abundances and the scarcities of a given economic era is bound to prosper, as Gilder noted many years ago.” (tags: abundance open-source scarcity economics artificial-scarcity) [...]

  • http://www.theequitykicker.com/2008/02/26/the-economics-of-free-and-how-they-might-change-everything/ The Equity Kicker » Blog Archive » The economics of free – and how they might change everything

    [...] to borrow a concept from JP Rangaswami. (In fact when I surf to his blog the lead post is about the economics of abundance, artificial scarcity and the Because [...]

  • http://evidencesx.wordpress.com Laurent Blondeau (Evidences)

    Yes, you’re obviously right. Abondance is a extremely important concept, and by the way think about those who have nothing. It will democratize in some way, open culture and knowledge in easier access, encourage people to give more and share : spreading pleasure all around the world, is an heritage we must continue. Softs and open source are tools to target it, for sure. And each day, rise up. But other make business with it, that can’t be a goal, but an opportunity, that’s all
    I think web2.0 is a step more, in knowledge access too, “social musing” can (must ?) be an added field, with the joy of each day, learn or teach something (for eachother or for ourselves)
    Don’t you believe so ?

  • http://thebucketblog.com/ Frymaster

    I’m sure this is old news for most readers, but this discussion dovetails with this from Chris at Wired.

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