I made this presentation at Seneca’s FSOSS a few weeks ago; some of these ideas have been rattling around in my brain for a while, but it was the first time I’d even run through it. I was thoroughly caffeinated at the time so all of my worst verbal tics are on display, right as usual um right pause right um. But if you want to have my perspective on why free and open source software matters, why some institutions and ideas live and others die out, and how I think you should design and build organizations around your idea so that they last a few hundred years, here you go.
There are some mistakes I made, and now that I’m watching it – I meant to say “merchants” rather than “farmers”, there’s a handful of others I may come back here to note later. But I’m still reasonably happy with it.