In this article I consider the Free Rider Problem and how it applies to free software, with references to the “Tragedy of the Commons” and the “Maker-Taker” problem. We find that with a nominal production cost approaching zero for free software, the free rider problem is not economically applicable. Moreover, when examining the nature of free software as a commons, we find that not only is it non-rivalrous, it is an anti-rival good. Far from being a problem, so-called “free-riders” actually increase the network value of the software, with each additional user contributing more value…
In his WCUS talk and elsewhere, Matt Mullenweg built an argument for Five for the Future on the foundation of the Tragedy of the Commons, casually dismissing Elinor Ostrom’s work to affirm the validity of Hardin’s “TC” theory to maintain the premise under which he’s about to attack WP Engine. Rather than staking the philosophy of an open source project and its ecosystem on this fundamentally flawed, baseless theory, we need discard it and build on a better foundation.
Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” was a 135-year-old hypothesis that he presented as inevitable fact. Untested, it was promoted by economists bent on privatization. In 1990, Elinor Ostrom published her work thoroughly disproving the theory. In 2003 upon his death, the university where he was a faculty member denounced Hardin’s theory and Hardin himself for the “morally repugnant and ethically reprehensible”, views underpinning his promotion of the theory. In 2009, Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 for her work in this area. Nevertheless, Hardin has become…