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I'm the founder of Gratipay, an open organization with a mission to cultivate an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love. We help companies and others pay for open source—and we're funded on our own platform. Offline, I live outside Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and online, I live on Slack, IRC, and GitHub.
Authored Comments
Organizations (~= legal entities) still exist in a perfect hacker world, and an *open* organization is still an *organization*, operating within the framework of (e.g.) trademark law. Whether a particular organization chooses to enforce trademarks within that framework is an open question, as is the evolution of that framework should openness carry the day.
But, why do you see trademarks and brands as such crucial issues?
Universal basic income (UBI) does seem to be part of the equation. That lessens the importance of money at the low end, so that it becomes easier to take risks on new ventures. What's more puzzling to me, though, is how to account for institutional supply if we lessen the importance of money at the *high* end. The profit motive is so strong! It's almost tautological to say that entrepreneurs are driven by the profit motive. And yet, I want to believe that there are deeper, truer motivations underlying at least a good swath of entrepreneurship. A sample sentiment from a recent conversation: "I want to create good jobs for people so that they can go out for a nice meal every now and then." For this person, the profit motive proxies care for others. Surely it often proxies barren greed, but I hold out hope for a virtuous cycle to emerge wherein open organizational forms call forth and reify the better angels of our nature.