Opensource : - what is hard to get ?

The opensource movement started in software and has been reasonably successful as a working model.
We tend to have many reactions against it with arguments like it keeps its proponent in poverty, it is anti business etc etc....

What the misunderstanding or fear of understanding lie in the fact that ideas and knowledge is defined as property.

Lets take a totally similar but different case : "the air we breathe"

Now should the air we breathe be free ?

Yes...
Now you may build a business on telling people that they should travel to the Andes to get better air (what ever better air means)...but you cannot blackmail people not to grow plants because its killing your business of providing good air to your customers.

Sure there is no money in the knowledge that growing trees provide oxygen....you may write a book about which plants to grow where and in what period...but you cannot block somebody from growing litchee trees because you claim you own the right on how to grow litchee trees



The open source licenses make sure that you can give litchee seeds to your friends or you can sell the seeds for a fee but you cannot stop the buyers from giving the seeds for free to their friends.

If it was not so someday breathing air will be limited to those who are able to pay.

Think about it.

People can make money on ideas or software or teaching but you cannot stop those who want to share air, knowledge, trees, ideas for free ....otherwise we are blocking something fundamental....the right to live