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Homesteading the Noosphere
by Eric S. Raymond
April 1998
Original: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading.html
After observing a contradiction between the `official' ideology defined by open-source licenses and the actual behavior of hackers, we examine the actual customs which regulate the ownership and control
of open-source software. We discover that they imply an underlying
theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land
tenure. We relate that to an analysis of the hacker culture
as a `gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige
by giving time, energy, and creativity away. We then examine the
implications of this analysis for conflict resolution in the culture,
and develop some prescriptive implications.
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