Some thoughts aroused again while reading Your post.

All products – artefacts that humankind had made during the history -from stone axe to cellphones – they all represent mixture of material and information. In these days we use less material and more information but the principle is basically the same.

Wikipedia and stone axe, both are products of collective creation. Even the simplest stone axe contains the great amount of (generation to generation) human knowledge transfer between our ancestors. And of course, when nowadays we have better information exchange facilities, then evolution of usable artefacts is more accelerated. But speaking of evolution, despite it makes illusion of coal directed development of all species – actually there is always bigger pool of species and branches that not last. Similarly unusable artifacts that do not last long have been always around in the history, but we don’t remember them because in conditions of slow technological evolution they were unnoticed (time gap between idea, final product and forsaking was bigger than human lifetime); however in conditions of accelerated technological evolution we can see in our lifetimes a lot of dead branches – unusable artefacts that not last.

Open source and free software development model is similar to evolution. There is no big plan, no central direction, there is no clear definition of desirable final state – but there are gradual improvements and gradual adoption to environment (i.e. user needs). And from developer point of view – there is no deadlines for specific software releases, there is no list of requirements and all developers have coals of their own for making their contribution, although this model works and some self-organisation happens.

I think that making money on information is not necessarily evil thing.

But what I find evil – it is the marketing model, which is based on multiplying the same artefacts in millions of copies and selling it. In Middle Ages in Europe such a multiplying was prohibited. For
example, when an artist finished a sculpture (using cast moulding) then he broke the mould demonstrating with it that the act of creation has to be unique and restricting making other copies.

What I like in this Middle Age model, is the fact, that the creator always get paid for creating new value, but not for selling old one repetitively.

I think that today when artefacts are more and more constituted by information, and information is ever- more easily accessible, then we are forced to come back to this Middle Age model and value act of creation more than marketing.

Regards
Take Care!

PS
I sent this comment to my personal gmail address for spell check, and when I opened it, then in the right column where sponsored links reside appear a link to China Decorative Moldings. Google does not stop to surprise me – yes, I know, in the letter I mentioned molding but relation with China feels a little bit Mystical:) There was no word about China in my letter.