Research
Free software
Software that anyone may run, study, change, and share.
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Nominate a WordPress plugin, best or worst
Help us tell the WordPress plugins that extend what people can do from the ones that take something away. Five plain questions.
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Elinor Ostrom and the open source commons
Ostrom showed that people can govern a shared resource without a sovereign or a market. Her eight principles, read as questions for WordPress, and what Illich adds.
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Judge a tool by what it does
Illich’s “counterproductivity” and Stafford Beer’s “the purpose of a system is what it does” reach the same destination by different roads. Justin Warren puts the same tests to work on open source.
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The gift is always being given
Lewis Hyde’s gift economy explains why free software and open protocols last. Gifts gain value by circulating; a tool for convivial tools should be one.