Why FOSS will not suffer from Tragedy of the Commons

Final

Free and Open Source Software will never succumb to the tragedy of the commons. FOSS simply uses a completely different model of generation and community consumption. The tragedy of the commons argument (Wikipedia page here) is often used as an argument for government regulation of collectively held assets or for the complete privatization of all the assets. 

Regulation is encouraged by some to prevent the overuse of the resource by a select few of the owners.  In the typical example there is a town with a collectively held green that is used for pasturage.  Every town citizen has the right to graze their cattle on the common.  Assuming all the interested parties would like to own healthy cattle for more than one year, there is both a collective and individual interest to keep the grass healthy and resilient through moderating the grass consumption.  Unchecked individuals may seek to one-up each other in over consumption of the commons and thus jeopardize the entire communities long term health.  Those on the side of regulation say "Let's just limit how much any one person can take from the commons so as to guarantee the long term sustainability of the commons".

Privatization is supported by others to replace the collective responsibility for the health of the commons with a personal self-interest that requires an individual to think sustainably for their own survival.  The idea is to split the commonly held land into parcels and give responsibility and ownership to individuals. These individuals would then internalize their need to keep the ground healthy for the next season which would induce self-moderation individually, and through a cascade of this responsibility, collectively.

The process that catalyzes and then later maintains then extends Free and Open Source Software uses the language of the commons but springs from entirely different constraints.  The commons used to graze Bostonian cattle in the example above was a finite resource in which the end product was a definable physical product - the well fed cow. Because there is a physical limitation of how much grass can be grown on the common there is a competition for fungible things. The fight is for who can get the most grass into the greatest number of cows.  Any grass that your cow eats means that my cow cannot eat it. It's a zero sum game, bub, and I want you to be the zero.

Free and Open Source Software doesn't deal in fungible goods - it simply packages methods of organizing thoughts through technical skill.  Free and Open Source Software are commonly created ideas that have been made real. There is no zero sum in the competition for open source software.  If you win, I can win too, then build off both victories to create another win-win.  Free and Open Source Software, as you can see by that flawless logic, is for winners! More seriously, FOSS doesn't do anything but help you work and think faster, better, smoother. By removing copyright and ownership from the equation you, the end user, can focus on what matters; the value-added from the tool and the quickness with which the tool can be produced or refined.

As Cameron Neylon at Science in the Open alludes to in this post "It is not the object that has value, because it can be infinitely copied for near zero cost, it is the skill and expertise in putting the object together that has value." What you pay for, when you pay for anything in the Free and Open Source world, is the idea - not the object.  Without an object, there's no tragedy on the commons.


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