Re:Tragedy of the WebKit Commons
by mempko on Thursday February 14, 2013 @09:58AM
(#5219690)
If you are going to reference "Tragedy of the Commons", do it correctly by pointing out what a horribly simpleminded fantasy the whole fiction is.
EDIT: for those that care, the original paper by Garrett Hardin simply explored the idea. He did not use real data and it was not scientific in any way. It was a thought experiment. And generally proven wrong.
Why it it relevant to mention this? Because the article mentioned here about Webkit references it in some attempt to connect it to the idea that Open Source or Free Software is an example of Garrett's argument.
However, if anything, Webkit is a counter example in an interesting way. One typical example of given to TOC is global fishing. However, if anything, global fishing is an example of large corporations exploiting a resource owned by nobody (vs a resourced owned in common). In a similar fashion, WebKit might be an example of corporations exploiting code owned by nobody.
Incidentally, this is not the case for many Free Software projects (vs Open Source). Because Free Software projects ARE owned by a group of people in common. And typically the governing structure is less exploitative, and more cooperative than corporate controlled projects like Webkit.
EDIT: for those that care, the original paper by Garrett Hardin simply explored the idea. He did not use real data and it was not scientific in any way. It was a thought experiment. And generally proven wrong.
Why it it relevant to mention this? Because the article mentioned here about Webkit references it in some attempt to connect it to the idea that Open Source or Free Software is an example of Garrett's argument.
However, if anything, Webkit is a counter example in an interesting way. One typical example of given to TOC is global fishing. However, if anything, global fishing is an example of large corporations exploiting a resource owned by nobody (vs a resourced owned in common). In a similar fashion, WebKit might be an example of corporations exploiting code owned by nobody.
Incidentally, this is not the case for many Free Software projects (vs Open Source). Because Free Software projects ARE owned by a group of people in common. And typically the governing structure is less exploitative, and more cooperative than corporate controlled projects like Webkit.