#254 Open Source Software: The Ownership Society Reimagined

Free and open source software has been quietly but inexorably changing the relationship between programmers and their employers, and between programmers and the software they build. By exposing the full value of shared code to all the parties who can benefit from that value, open source realizes a kind of arbitrage on the difference between monopolized and non-monopolized digital information.

Programmers entering the professional software world today should understand how to use this dynamic to their advantage; employers should as well, and those who do will have access to a wider range of developers and technology than those who don’t.

Karl Fogel, long time Chi Hack Night member and partner at Open Tech Strategies will examine the professional and societal consequences of today’s robust open source ecosystem. He will offer some new ways to look at other kinds of replicable goods, and explore the possibility of similarly unlocking and reallocating value in areas beyond software.