The Next Edge

There is in the U.S. and most other countries one other increasingly significant marginalized population who I think are worthy of our attention. This group is widely recognized but seldom spoken of in terms of justice, exploitation, marginalization and privilege. That population is the unborn generations of our collective future. The ways we marginalize this population are becoming identified, named and recognized in a new field called "intergenerational justice" or "intergenerational equity". In the process of considering fairness, power and obligation among past, present, and future generations, ethicists in this field have noted that the unsustainable use of resources leads to significant intergenerational inequity.

One of the problems we need to solve during this transition is to define a strategy to play the open game. How can we make sure that those who invest in open products get rewarded for their contribution? How can we make sure that one can feed his family from participating in the design, production and distribution of open products. We often hear: "if your product is successful you'll get copied"; "if you offer your recipe to everyone no one will buy your product, people will make it themselves"; etc.

Playing the open game is not just about releasing all the information and knowledge about the product.

Games require rules. A lot of efforts have been spent on drafting licenses for open products (see example from p2p foundation). But these licenses are, in some sense, as good as patents, i.e. as good as YOU can defend them.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Production_License

Stuart Kauffman discusses his book Beyond Reductionism...

via David Hodgson @davidhodgson