Leigh has been asking me for ages to write about open source and sustainability. There are a zillion pages about open source and sustainability but almost without exception they are solely about the long term viability of open source (either as a business model or maintainability of code). I would really really like to see some discussion of open source that considers wider sustainability beyond this extremely narrow interpretation.
So, I am very pleased that TED has released this talk by Yochai Benkler . While not explicitly considering sustainabilty, he does talk about macro economic effects, empowerment and democratisation – all the sort of thing that we need to build a real picture of open source sustainability. More please…
Posted in: Computing for Sustainability
Computing for Sustainability 
leighblackall
April 20, 2008
Great you have found Yochai. We reference him a lot in our courses. I brought in a copy of his book Wealth of Networks to Billy Bob library. But its available on his wiki and no doubt developed since the book was published
Samuel Mann
April 20, 2008
Leigh, The problem is that the Open Source community doesn’t appear to know about Yochai Benkler. Do a search for “open source sustainability” on google: except for a few lost hits sneaking in from treehugger, Make etc, I can’t find a reference to holistic sustainability (ie beyond business viability) for the first few pages at least.