Is the future open?
Something curious has been occurring in the world of digital rights. Openness, once one of the cornerstones of Internet culture, has lost its shine. There used to be a time in which everything was open. We had open source, open access, open science, open content, open hardware, open source water, and a similar bunch of related “free” stuff; free software, free culture, free beer. But nowadays it would seem that the only open thing we can find is OpenAI. Where has the openness movement gone?
Don’t get me wrong, there is still a healthy open source software environment, but outside of that one could easily argue that the erstwhile healthy openness environment has been slowly disappearing, and on the contrary, in some circles the concept has become despised. I think that this is in part for a few reasons: the concept of openness became a victim of its own success, there’s also growing ignorance about the theory of the movement, and to a lesser degree AI has poisoned everyone’s minds.
So perhaps a bit of history is warranted. Arguably the concept of openness as we know it today started with the Free Software movement in the 80s. Developers like Richard Stallman wanted to foster a development environment where sharing code would be an ethical precept; you would write code and make it available to others, and you would benefit from this environment by being able to use other people’s code.
Openness in the sense of digital culture can be better understood as a commons. A commons is a resource shared by a group of people, managed collectively according to rules and norms developed by the community, rather than by the market or the state. It can be physical (like forests or fisheries) or digital (like open source software or Wikipedia). Arguably the best theorist of modern commons is Elinor Ostrom, who challenged the conventional wisdom that shared resources inevitably suffer from overuse and depletion, the so-called “tragedy of the commons.” Instead, she demonstrated through empirical studies that communities can effectively self-organise to manage common-pool resources without requiring top-down regulation or privatisation. This framework is highly relevant to digital spaces, where shared informational and cultural resources such as open source software flourish under collaborative governance. Like physical commons, these digital spaces rely on norms, mutual trust, and decentralised rule-making to sustain participation and prevent abuse. Ostrom suggests that digital commons, far from being chaotic or fragile, can be robust ecosystems when managed by communities invested in their stewardship.
In a similar vein and relevant to openness, peer production is a way of creating goods, knowledge, or services through the collaborative efforts of a large, often decentralised group of individuals, usually without traditional hierarchical structures or market-based incentives. This term was coined by Yochai Benkler, and it describes how people voluntarily contribute their time and skills, often over the internet, to build shared resources like Wikipedia, open-source software, or digital archives. Peer production is characterised by openness, decentralised control, and the use of digital tools to coordinate and integrate contributions, enabling large-scale collaboration without needing formal organisations or monetary compensation.
The other example of the openness ideal can be found in the concept of free culture. Free culture refers to a movement that promotes the freedom to use, modify, share, and build upon creative works without excessive legal or technological restrictions. Rooted in the ideas of open access and the digital commons, it challenges the expansion of copyright and other intellectual property regimes that limit participation in cultural production. Popularised by Lawrence Lessig, the concept argues that culture thrives when people can freely remix and engage with existing works, especially in the digital age where copying and collaboration are easier. Free culture advocates for legal tools like Creative Commons licences and supports platforms that encourage open sharing, aiming to keep culture accessible, participatory, and democratic.
You can see how at some point the concept became appealing, particularly in leftist circles. This is not communism, but a philosophy of co-operation, sharing, participation, and enhancing human creativity. All solid concepts in social democracies. The concept of openness proved its usefulness in the place where it was born, in the software industry. I am old enough to remember when the proprietary software industry was opposed to open source software with a passion that was scary. I still remember being pitted in conferences against representatives for either Microsoft or the Business Software Alliance, or similar entities. Open source was scary, insecure, it would destroy companies and leave them with no support. This continued until it didn’t; suddenly open source won across the board, and the former opponents became enthusiastic proponents.
How did this happen? Easy, open source software had a solid business case: every sort of software developer could have easy access to open source repositories with millions of lines of code freely available (with some rights reserved), and as long as you were willing to negotiate some licence conditions, you were good to go.
Outside of software, openness and the commons had some success, but they were not such a runaway hit. Wikipedia is perhaps the biggest shining example of peer production, and the media repository that is Wikimedia Commons also serves as another example of the commons at work. In academia, open access was another area where openness shone. I’ve discussed open access before, but suffice it to say that it allows academic writers to share their works freely using a permissive licence, usually Creative Commons, in theory making scientific research more accessible to the public.
All of the above sounds impressive, so if you have made it this far you may be rightly wondering why I am implying that there are problems with openness. I’m glad you asked.
Even from the beginning, there was a strong preoccupation from some people with sharing works with little or no restriction free of charge. Why do people give away their creative works so freely? There is no single answer. In my case, I make all of my work available to the public because I am a true believer in the commons. Other people are inspired by more transactional interests: you give me something, I will participate back. There are places that have built a sense of community, such as Wikipedia. There are people who want to become better known, so they share only some stuff with the understanding that they will close it in the future. In software, openness is the prevalent model, and the business models have responded to that.
The thing is that the above is not enough to sustain a movement, so over time fewer people shared their images using Creative Commons, also for various reasons. The prevalent one was apathy and ignorance. CC used to be very popular; nowadays it’s less known, and you generally have to be a copyright nerd or a librarian to know about it. Outside of software and academia, openness failed to gain a foothold.
But perhaps the most importantly the concept of full openness itself produced results that some people did not envisage, or were undesirable. Ever since the start of open software there was a conflict at the heart of the commons movement, and it was between those who advocated a commons with commercial restrictions, and those who didn’t. You could argue that there are two important types of works in the commons, those that you can re-use for commercial purposes, and those that you can’t, or can only with restrictions. Even from the software days, licences were divided between those written with no restrictions (eg BSD and MIT), and those with more restrictions such as the GPL. More open licences allow practically all re-uses, even commercial, which makes them more popular with businesses. Similarly in Creative Commons there are more open licences, particularly CC-BY, which only requires re-uses provided the licensor gives attribution, while other licences such as BY-NC-SA, the one I use in this blog, have restrictions for commercial use. The reason for the split is obvious, some people resent the idea of an enterprise building on their works. There is something that appears inherently unfair in making something you worked for available for free so that a business can profit from it.
But openness has always had that built in. Over time, these cracks have widened, and it is possible for people to look back on the success of the open source movement built on a model that helps huge businesses, and flinch. What are we doing? Why are we still giving things away for free?
Personally my ideals haven’t changed. Openness and the commons have that as a necessary evil if you may; the idea is that for every business that profits, there are thousands of people who can start their small business thanks to open resources. I was recently in Ghana for a workshop and looking at a number of projects relying on open source software tools, and on open data, I was reminded of how important open tools are for people around the world. For every Apple profiting from open source software, there are tens of thousands of small researchers and developers who can get started precisely because they have access to free tools.
AI also has a lot to answer for, but that is a subject for another blog post. But it is undeniable that openness is not as shiny and new as it was in the 00s.
Concluding
Despite these challenges, the openness movement deserves continued support and engagement. What began as a radical idea in software development has transformed industries and empowered countless individuals and communities worldwide. Perhaps what we need is not to abandon openness, but to reimagine it for our current context. We need to acknowledge its limitations while preserving its core values of sharing, collaboration, and accessibility. The pendulum may have swung away from unrestricted openness in recent years, but the fundamental premise remains sound: knowledge and tools should be available to all who might benefit from them, not merely those who can afford to pay. The challenge now is to find sustainable models that protect creators whilst maintaining the spirit of openness that has benefited so many.
And remember, free is free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Unless the beer is Free Beer. Hmmmm… beer… It’s too early for a beer, maybe later.
