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Thurston Howell III and Open Source Economics

2 replies on 1 page. Most recent reply: Sep 7, 2004 11:37 AM by John D. Mitchell

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John D. Mitchell

Posts: 244
Nickname: johnm
Registered: Apr, 2003

Thurston Howell III and Open Source Economics (View in Weblogs)
Posted: Sep 1, 2004 9:59 PM
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Summary
What do examples of post-fiat economics have to do with open source?
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The Mises Institute has published an interesting article on The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III (the rich character on the campy TV show, Gilligan's Island).

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out how these examples of post-fiat economics apply to the free / open-source software.


Matt Gerrans

Posts: 1153
Nickname: matt
Registered: Feb, 2002

Re: Thurston Howell III and Open Source Economics Posted: Sep 2, 2004 11:57 AM
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Is the open source community yet beyond the barter stage? If I'm working on project X and you on project Y and I want you to do some work on X for me (or "for the project"), what can I offer other than to reciprocate? I supose those who have "cred" can offer that; for example Linus Torvalds probably could exchange his endorsement in lieu of actual work.

I suppose the reason conventional money cannot work in open source is that its supply, like the gold in Gilligan's Island, is unstable. There may be infusions, but it doesn't necessarily stay in the open source realm and it is very unpredictable.

I guess the currency is bits, but I'm not sure what two bits will get you at current exchange rates.

That's just my 16% of a bit.

John D. Mitchell

Posts: 244
Nickname: johnm
Registered: Apr, 2003

Re: Thurston Howell III and Open Source Economics Posted: Sep 7, 2004 11:37 AM
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Bryan Cantrill talks about the FYO point and open source in his blog on the Economics of Software: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc/20040828#the_economics_of_software

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