Dries Buytaert argues that an open source project bundles four distinct economic goods — the code itself, the infrastructure it runs on, maintainer time and stewardship, and the commercial ecosystem built around it — and that lumping them into a single commons hides who already pays, who controls access, and who should be asked to contribute. Separating excludable from rival goods lets a project decide what it can charge for and what it must budget for, so stewardship can be funded without making the code less open.
Open Source is four kinds of economic goods
Dries Buytaert argues that an open source project bundles four distinct economic goods — the code itself, the infrastructure it runs on, maintainer time and stewardship, and the commercial ecosystem built around it — and that lumping them into a single commons hides who already pays, who controls access, and who should be asked to contribute. Separating excludable from rival goods lets a project decide what it can charge for and what it must budget for, so stewardship can be funded without making the code less open.
Source: Dri