Musings on the concept of ‘open source’, in the broadest possible definition of the term.
Also an invitation to become a participant in and contributor to The Commons: our common wealth of knowledge as conscious beings.
An expansive list of resources for further reading is provided in the Open Source Curriculum. This document is a synthesis of all the free teachings therein.
v1.1 of ‘Open Source Explained’ has been written by Erlend Sogge Heggen.
Table of Contents
What is open source?
The term ‘open source’ started in software development, but it is applicable to anything. If a thing is open source, first and foremost it means you have access to its source code — what makes that thing tick.
If a thing is open source, it means that the source code of that thing is available for insight and editing, and may even be copied, repurposed and shared with others under certain conditions.
Here is an open source recipe for making popcorn:
- Put some cooking oil in a thin and shallow pot
- Bring it to medium heat
- Put a handful of dried corn into the pot
- Gradually increase heat until the corn starts popping
- Add any flavoring of your choice
That is a food recipe code. Everything in our knowable world is made up of some type of code, it’s not just computer programs:
Our music is composed of note codes.
Our judicial system is made up of legal codes.
Our government is a big ol’ pile of bureaucratic codes.
Our educational system abides by pedagogical codes.
Our DNA is one long genetic code.
Most dictionaries will give the impression that open source as a concept exists primarily for software, but that would be a massive waste of its potential. I did find one that I liked:
‘open-source ’ on Dictionary.com:
adjective
(…)
pertaining to or denoting a product or system whose origins, formula, design, etc., are freely accessible to the public.
Closed source is the conceptual opposite of open source:
‘closed source ’ on Dictionary.com:
noun
- intellectual property, esp computer source code, that is not made available to the general public by its creators.
In other words, closed-source products belong strictly to the people who made them, whereas open-source products exemplify various forms of collective ownership.
The Commons
The commons is a new way to express a very old idea—that some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good of all. ~source
Our open source things, knowledge and relationships are all part of the the great commons that constitutes our shared, non-individuated world. Anything that is open source (adjective) is a part of the commons, and by open sourcing (verb) an artifact you have effectively committed it to the commons.
Scholars such as David Harvey have adopted the term commoning, which as a verb serves to emphasize an understanding of the commons as a process and a practice rather than as “a particular kind of thing” or static entity. Some authors distinguish between the resources shared (the common-pool resources), the community who governs it, and commoning, that is, the process of coming together to manage such resources. Commoning thus adds another dimension to the commons, acknowledging the social practices entailed in the process of establishing and governing a commons. These practices entail, for the community of commoners, the creation of a new way of living and acting together, thus involving a collective psychological shift: it also entails a process of subjectivization, where the commoners produce themselves as common subjects.
Think of The Commons as the vast collection of things and the connections between things in the world that we all steward together in shared ownership. I like to occasionally write it capitalized because it deserves the same legitimacy we give to our physical cities and countries; in fact it supercedes them all.
Back in the Stone Age, the vast majority of stuff only existed as a commons; people could only own something insofar as they could reach out and touch it. Today the commons is no longer the default. Everything has been divided up as people’s property, some with obscenely much more than others. Not even the social ties between persons, i.e. our social networks, are safe from corporate enclosures.
Because of this grossly uneven distribution it’s hard not to perceive the world in terms of scarcity rather than abundance. The haves and the have-nots. If you live in a world of scarcity, it makes sense to carefully guard any thing you have in your posession that can be considered valuable.
This is where software and the internet revolution performs one of the greatest magic tricks in history, by making certain forms of value creation incredibly cost-effective and scalable.
Digital Commons
The commons that I understand best is the digital software commons, so that’ll be our primary case study throughout the book. Two decades ago software would have been an unnecessarily nerdy entrypoint for understanding the implications of open source praxis, but software has since “eaten the world”, enveloping it in a digital membrane that leaves no life untouched.
To navigate the modern world is to navigate through software, most of it with unnecessarily strict prescriptions for how we ought to conduct ourselves. To be an advocate of the digital commons extends far beyond openly licensed computer software and into liberatory technology.
This sub-section from the Commons page on Wikipedia goes several layers deeper into our common cause as commoners:
Mayo Fuster Morell proposed a definition of digital commons as “information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusive, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources.”
Examples of digital commons are Wikipedia, free software and open-source hardware projects.
Following the narrative of post-growth, the digital commons can present a model of progress that guide commoners to build counter-power in the economic and political field. Being able to digitally share knowledge and resources through internet platforms is a new capacity that challenges the traditional hierarchical structures of production, allowing for a higher collective benefit and a sustainable management of resources.
Non-material resources are digitally reproducible and therefore can be shared at a low cost, contrary to physical resources which are quite limited. Shared resources represent in this context data, information, culture and knowledge which are produced and accessible online. In accordance with the “design global, manufacture local” approach digital commons may link the traditional commons theory with existing physical infrastructures. It further connects with the degrowth communities since transformations in use-value creation by employing new technologies, decoupling society from GDP growth and lower carbon dioxide emissions, are envisioned.
Moreover, as a decentralized approach, there is a strong emphasis on inclusion and democratic regulation which has led Commons as an alternative, emancipatory and emerging form of social organization that goes beyond democratic capitalism. Accordingly, through the cooperation of diverse stakeholders and the equitable distribution of means of production, technological development becomes more accessible and bottom-up projects are fostered in communities
For more on the commons I recommend David Bollier’s Thinking Like a Commoner, second edition (2025). It will be repeatedly quoted throughout this book.
On his website, David introduces newcomers as follows:
https://www.bollier.org/new-to-the-commons
New to the Commons?
If you’re coming to the commons for the first time, it can be difficult to grok the idea because there are so many different ways to understand the commons. That’s because the commons is not so much a fixed, universal thing as a general concept describing durable, dynamic sets of social relationships for managing resources — all sorts of resources: digital, urban, natural, indigenous, rural, cultural, scientific, to use some crude categories.
Each commons has its own distinctive character because each is shaped by its particular location, history, culture and social practices. So it can be hard for the newcomer to see the patterns of “commoning.” The term commoning means to suggest that the commons is really more of a verb than a noun. It is a set of ongoing practices, not an inert physical resource. There is no commons without commoning. This helps explain why the commons is different from a “public good”; the commons is not just an economistic category floating in the air without actual people. There are no commons without commoners.
Getting a grip on the commons can be difficult, too, because there is no definitive canon of works. The particular commons that you inhabit and participate in will shape your view of what perspectives are noteworthy and explanatory. A commoner in Africa will see the commons in a different light than a European or an Asian or an American. Context matters. That's why a universal, unitary “defintion” of the commons is problematic. The phenomena of the commons are so segmented and fractal — yet related!
As this suggests, there is no substitute for spending a little time exploring the commons from many different angles. The concept cannot be understood in one sound bite.
Openness according to software developers
In the world of computer code and software development, we contribute most commonly to The Commons by making our computer code open source. That means we are sharing the source – the inner workings – of our computer program, out in the open, for anyone to look at and remix.
This enables us to understand and change how our many digital and physical gadgets work. And when our gadgets are increasingly in control of our lives, this is a big deal.
The communities that have formed around computer code and its resulting software applications have become quite advanced in their discourse on ‘openness’, in large part because clear definitions of openness in code has major business applications $$$.
Thus, we’ve got specifications and protocols that describe varying degrees of openness in software, so that we may all collaborate with ease and move fast. It has made our industry eat up the whole world, nations and all.
The vast majority of software companies are built on the foundations provided by open source code. But most of these companies are profit-first rather than value-first. For the opportunists and profiteers, their involvement in open source practices is merely coincidental, not out of a sense of obligation to The Commons.
They’re not about progress for all, they’re just about progress for themselves.
If you want to go fast go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
~ African proverb
People in tech still have a lot to learn about openness as an innately human, emotional trait. Most of us got unusually comfortable with machines exactly because we had an easier time making sense of 1s and 0s than our selves and fellow human beings with our soft, squishy innards.
There’s a lot you shouldn’t learn from software developers. Most things in fact. But the practice of open source as it applies to your life and the world around you is a conceptual understanding you don’t want to be without.
Source code access
Having access to the source code of a thing means seeing exactly how that thing operates. Oftentimes those things are the products that we purchase when we play the role of consumer. We purchase these products – like a car, a house or a smartphone – believing we’ve made a payment in exchange for total ownership of a given product. But if you do not have access to the source code of the product you bought, you only have partial ownership of it.
For a house, that source code is its blueprint, construction specifications and list of materials used to build it.
Examples: wikihouse.cc, openbuildinginstitute.org
For a car it’s the many mechanical parts it’s made up of, what they all do and how they fit together. It’s also increasingly about the computer code that powers the car’s many microcomputers.
Examples: Open-source_car (Wikipedia), openmotors.co, Open Source Farm Machines (TED talk).
For a smartphone it’s the tightly intertwined combination of hardware and software. The source code of the hardware (everything from its exterior metal casing, all the way down to microchips the size of a fingernail) would be schematics of how these components are built. The source code of the software (the operating system, like Android or iOS, and the apps that run on top) is plain computer code, i.e. open source software.
Examples: Librem 5, Arduino, FairPhone.
Of course, all the things mentioned above are composites of other, smaller things, which in turn also need to be open source if you want true, 100% ownership. But it’s fine to make some concessions here, as long as our production chain doesn’t rely on closed black-boxes with a disproportionate amount of power.
(“How I built a toaster — from scratch” (TED talk) perfectly demonstrates the complexity of our modern production chains.)
The source code of everything
As members of society we have a legal right to insight into many of the things in our daily lives, albeit only a partial one in most cases:
- Food contents
- Garment fabrics
- Building blueprints
Some things, commonly artifacts of knowledge, are nearly as open as they can possibly be already:
- Wikipedia
- Most scientific discoveries
- Most religious scriptures
- Books, music and films that have been released into the Public domain.
Your insight into these knowledge resources is unrestricted, but how you may re-make or re-purpose these resources is subject to formal or informal rules.
A book in the public domain is as open as it gets, because the text of the book is the source code.
By contrast, a musical composition is not yet as open as it can be if all you’ve got is a sound recording. You may be allowed to remix and share this particular recording in whichever way you’d like, but in order to play this musical composition with your own instruments and orchestra, you need the musical notes. In other words, the code of the music.
A gifted musician might be able to recreate all the notes of a sound recording simply by listening carefully to it, but they’ve effectively obtained access to those notes in spite of that composition’s lack of openness.
We do this in software as well. A program that is closed source can be ‘reverse engineered’ by closely studying its function and wholly remaking it anew, without any insight into the closed bits. A functional replica.
Understanding ownership is power
It’s important to understand the codes in your life, because your life is made up of them. Once you understand which codes you already have access to and even the right to inspect, you can see more clearly which other codes you ought to have insight into.
Most importantly, from my limited point of view as a digital native, we must be able to inspect our digital tools. Our apps and devices of daily convenience have become so advanced that they are extensions of our brains. Incredibly powerful, deeply embedded mind-extensions.
If we do not have clear insight into these devices, we are not in total control of our own minds.
From closed to open and beyond
Software developers have a clear distinction between ‘open source’ and ‘closed source’ software.
Open = source code is available and altering it is allowed.
Closed = source code is unavailable and altering is disallowed.
Distinguishing closed from open
Imagine yourself buying a beautiful compass, so you may traverse the world with greater ease.
If you are sold just a compass, you have received a closed source product. It works, but it is sealed shut and you do not know what goes on inside.
All you’ve got is this compass-gadget that will eventually break. And when it breaks, you’ve got two options:
1. Find the compass-maker and hope they’ll agree to fix it or give you a new one.
2. Make peace with no longer having a functional compass.
When the compass-maker is nowhere to be found, or a mutually fair trade could not be established, you’re left with the 2nd choice.
If the compass was merely used as a toy, you’ll get by fine. But if the compass was enabling you to do great things, and even more greatness would happen if more of your peers also had a compasses of their own? Well, then a big opportunity is missed by not having access to the product’s source code.
If the compass-maker gives you an unsealed compass and the instructions on how to make one yourself, you have received an open source product.
As it turns out, the compass-maker’s main innovation was making the compass look, feel and function more beautifully.
How to make a compass is already common knowledge. Anyone can make their own compass, for example with the following items:
- Sewing needle about 1-2 inches long
- Small bar magnet or refrigerator magnet
- A small piece of cork (a flat piece from a wine bottle works but make sure it is cork and not plastic)
- A shallow bowl
- Pliers
With those items plus the linked instructions you can make your own compass. The extent to which you can re-make a compass that looks and functions exactly like the one you’ve bought comes down to how open that compass-product is.
Degrees of Openness
Continuing the compass story:
Example 1: Minimally open
Let’s say the compass-maker – henceforth known as the ‘artisan’ – tells you the following:
“Along with this fully functional compass, I have included the instructions on how to make your own compass. Your self-made compass will function according to the same exact fundamental principles as the compass I’ve sold you.
However! you do not get the instructions on how to make a compass that looks, feels and functions quite as well as the compass being sold.”
The artisan does this – as a perfectly rational actor – so that they won’t be without a job. The artisan spent a great deal of time learning and figuring out how to make the compass look, feel and function more beautifully. If they give away all the secrets of their craft without delay, these beautiful compasses will be so easy to re-make by anyone that there would quickly be no demand for the artisan’s wares.
Besides, the compass can still be opened up and taken apart to learn how exactly it works, i.e. by reverse engineering it.
Example 2: Very open
A somewhat more open version of this would be that the artisan says:
“Along with this compass I’ll give you the instructions on how to re-make the entire thing, down to the last notch.
However! Do me this courtesy: Only share these instructions peer-to-peer, one individual to another.”
Example 3: Maximally open
A fully open version of this would have the artisan saying:
“Along with this compass I’ll give you the instructions on how to re-make the entire thing, down to the last notch.
No strings attached. Please share this knowledge as widely as possible. You need not worry about me, because (...).”
Some product-makers can fill in the end of that sentence, others can’t. The constraint is usually not ingenuity, but quite simply the reality of current conditions. Not every product can be fully open upon initial sale whilst also sustaining its original invention and continued development.
At what point does a house that you supposedly “own” go from being ‘closed source’ to ‘open source’?
What does open source baking look like?
What does open source schooling look like?
…let that ball roll as far as it’ll go.
Origins of open software
A 5-minute history lesson on open software licenses and their tribes.
Before we can talk about the future of open source, we must attend to its past. The historical dramas of open source helps us understand what needs healing in order for us to move forward as a unified community again.
Software freedoms
The beginnings of what is now most commonly referred to as ‘open source software’ was an earlier movement that coined the term Free Software. While it’s mainly about free-ness akin to ‘free speech’ and not necessarily about being ‘free of charge’, the latter is almost always the case as well.
By the 1980s, almost all software was proprietary, which means that it had owners who forbid and prevent cooperation by users.
Source: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
In response to the prevailing trend of closed software, a group of liberal-minded technologists devised The Free Software Definition. Think of it as a “Declaration of Code Freedoms”. It goes like this:
A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others.
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Openness licenses
Along with these principles came the first standardized and open software licenses. That’s a piece of text that explains the conditions under which you may use and remix that software program.
A license can be created for anything, not just software. For a simple example we can look at the Creative Commons license, which is widely used for artworks like music and illustrations.
Here is the ‘Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License’ – or CC-BY for short – in its entire human-readable (not legalese) form:
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Traditional companies selling closed-source software have their own company-specific licenses. The terms basically say: “You’re allowed to run this program, and that’s it. Don’t try to look inside or attempt to make any changes”.
The new breed of open licenses that sprung forth in the 80s on the other hand could be used by anyone, private or corporate. Just copy the text, include it with your code collection whenever you’re sharing it with someone and presto, you’ve applied a formal license-of-use to your software.
“Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Source: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
These principles and accompanying software licenses have been adopted by some of the most widespread software applications in the world. Chief among these are the Linux operating system (powers 95% of the internet’s servers, as well as all Android phones) and the WordPress website builder (powers 40% of all websites on the internet — second place is at about 5%).
The Free Software Foundation believes that all software should be free in accordance with the four essential freedoms. It’s an honorable aspiration, but it’s been proven unfeasible in our current model of society.
Selling a free thing
While products like Linux and WordPress are free for users to study, run, change, copy and distribute, they are still run as major commercial projects. In the case of these projects it’s relatively easy to balance complete openness with commercialization, because these are server applications. As such, it’s easy to turn them into services that run on privately controlled servers that charge users for access.
WordPress.com will happily let you set up your website without a single mention of it actually being powered by free software that you could operate on your own computer should you choose to do so — but honestly you should just use their service instead, it’s much easier. The openness of their product means you can take your whole website and leave whenever you’d like, should their serviced alternative ever turn bad. You can see how this is an incredibly powerful consumer protection.
It’s quite telling that while Linux has over 95% market share on servers (the place where all the cat pictures are stored and streamed out from), while its market share on desktops (PCs & laptops) is a dismal 2%.
Free and open source software is increasingly dominant on the world wide web, but closed software still rules supreme on all the devices in our homes. That’s because it’s incredibly hard to commercialize free software that just lives on your device, rather than in some server you need to connect to.
That’s not to say these projects aren’t amazing; they are. Probably the greatest indicator of how these projects are different from your average corporate behemoth is how there is no “Linux Company.” or “WordPress Company”. Instead there’s the Linux Foundation and the WordPress Foundation, both of which are comprised of large consortiums of companies with common interests.
An unprecedented feat of global collaboration in service of a shared commons.
Freedom vs Openness
In 1998 the Open Source Initiative was founded, effectively as a spinoff of FSF.
The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape [the precursor to Mozilla Firefox] to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label [open source] that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label “free software.”
Source: https://opensource.org/history
The OSI branded itself as more pragmatic and business-friendly. They did not share the FSF’s fundamentalist view that absolutely all software should be freely available under the same stringent terms. The founding members of the OSI wanted to enable the release of software with a mix of open and closed source code.
Along with a list of OSI-approved licenses, they drafted The Open Source Definition.
It is important to note that this is not the definition for ‘open source’. There is no central authority for the term, so there is no official definition. No one can claim to own the term ‘open source’, just like no one can lay a claim to words like ‘swimming pool’ and ‘computer’.
Fast forward to 2020: The grand total of OSI-style licensed software now far outweighs FSF-style licensed software, proving that there was indeed a greater appetite for more permissive software licensing that doesn’t prevent you from coupling your open source application with some sort of commercial layer.
Open source is on the rise, but if we stop innovating on open source licenses now we’ll be doing ourselves a great disservice. OSI and FSF are both winners. Both can point to multi-billion dollar industries built around the principles and foundations they have set forth. We also wouldn’t have the trillion-dollar companies of today if they weren’t supercharged by free and open source software, but that’s not really a point in their favor; quite on the contrary.
Open Source is a privilege
Privilege has a strong correlation with openness.
With greater privilege comes greater capacity for openness.
Sadly, not all people with great privilege make use of that extra capacity.
On the other hand, for some greatly unprivileged people, openness is their only choice. In the face of violence and death, openness becomes the only reasonable thing left to do.
When openness is vulnerability
If open source is just an obviously better way to build products, companies and governments, why aren’t we doing more of it already?
Simple: It’s really scary to be open. It can even be legitimately dangerous. Sharing a part of yourself in the open makes you vulnerable. A part of your soft underbelly is exposed.
Openness is the willingness to tell people your story.
Vulnerability is your willingness to let others be part of it.
~ Melissa Joy
The fear of loss,
