One of the great things about free software is how it encourages the creation and persistence of social capital.
Social capital is a term that has become popular in the past few years as a shorthand reference to the web of mutual obligation that holds society together. The difficult thing for most people to understand is that social capital __cannot__ be measured in strictly monetary terms. Can you place a dollar figure on having helpful , trustworthy neighbours? Or on a mailing list of technically savvy people who can help you out with perplexing questions about your software that aren't covered in the manual? Or on having a colleague who can help you grasp a new idea? The reciprocal sharing that the GPL was designed to preserve is an age-old tradition common to most human societies. Mutual cooperation for mutual benefit is the name of the game, and often the benefits that arise out of mutual cooperation are ones that cannot be obtained by other means. Of course there are occasionally conflicts between self interest and cooperation, and the obvious difficulty that you cannot compel cooperation is held by some to be the root cause of government. Just a few thoughts, larry PS. This week is Bug Week at mozilla.org learn about mozilla internals http://www.efn.org/~laprice ( Community, Cooperation, Consensus http://www.opn.org ( Openness to serendipity, make mistakes http://www.efn.org/~laprice/poems ( but learn from them.(carpe fructus ludi) http://allie.office.efn.org/phpwiki/index.php?OregonPublicNetworking
