F/OSS is the salvation of humanity... what does that mean?

I participate in a Harvard Law School open knowledge sharing program called H2O, which this week posed an inspiring issue regarding the origins and impact world-wide of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS), which is the foundation of REALNEO. If you're interested in this subject (if you're into IT you should be), then consider the topic posed, take a look at my viewpoint, and feel free to visit Harvard H2O to review other viewpoints and the discussion. If you like what you see there - feel free to sign-up and participate, for free.

Harvard H2O site home page [1]

Harvard H2O discussion at their ISIE Fall 2004 Symposium - Culture of Sharing [2]

And the question is:

Berkman Center research fellow Ethan Zuckerman poses the following question:

F/OSS (Free and Open Source Software) developers have had a great
decade: Linux has transformed from a student project into the leading
competitor to Microsoft in the operating system market; open source
Apache webservers, mySQL and Perl/Python/PHP have emerged as the tools
the cool kids are using to build web services. Observers of the F/OSS
movement often describe it as being influenced by a "culture of
sharing". Participants in the culture are rewarded with prestige,
rather than financial gain, in proportion to the value to the tools
they produce and give away. Some thinkers argue that the success of
this culture of sharing points to a future in which content,
distributed under flexible, pro-sharing licenses like Creative Commons,
will challenge existing content creation models.

Geek philosopher Eric Raymond points out that cultures of sharing
appear to develop in an economic atmosphere of abudance. American and
European universities, and venture-backed dot.com startups are both
economically abundant atmospheres where many F/OSS tools were
developed. Will the culture of sharing around F/OSS continue as
developers in poorer nations (Brazil, India, China, Russia, Mexico)
become active participants in the culture? Will it break down? Or is
the "culture of sharing" a myth - a smokescreen for the complex
economics that allow F/OSS to come into existence?

And my viewpoint is: 

F/OSS is the key to empowering all people, for the first
time in history. That accomplished, all people can collaborate at the
individual level, world-wide, and perhaps save Earth. This is not happening
because of abundance in a few universities but because of scarcity world-wide –
poverty world-wide - and only through the heroic, individual, ingenious commitments
of 1,000s of the world’s smartest, most giving technologists, developing the most
intelligent, lowest cost solutions for all people world-wide… and F/OSS
champions do care about that, and saving the world. Consider them the Peace
Corps of the new millennium, who aren’t taking it any more.

As the question points out, F/OSS has reinvented content
management and, not stated, enables explosive virtual community development and
integration - disruptive technology enabling disruptive social and cultural realignments
shifting paradigms, at the best. So empowered, individuals are toppling
corporate monopolies and will topple autocracies (e.g. obsolescing mainstream
push media... radio... music distribution) - this is not about sharing but
about reinventing peer to peer relations and the global economy. Such
disruption may be possible with licensed software, if effective and available
to do any of this, but none is... IT innovations are happening much faster world-wide
under open source than has ever been possible at any software development corporations
large or small. With these disruptive technologies come innovative new business
models, and plenty of people are making money in the open source space -
programming, customizing, developing, integrating, managing, training,
hosting... reinventing economies. The only reason people in developing nations
may not yet be fully leveraging F/OSS is because they pirate licensed software
and so use that for free, and are still getting up the curve with that. Within
a few years, we'll see much broader use in developing nations of the best open
source applications, which will become free de facto standards world-wide.
Firefox will soon exceed 10% of the Internet browser market. LAMP is dominant
in the web development world. Community leaders in Northeast Ohio are
reinventing the Cleveland economy using Drupal, OurMedia and PeopleAggregator. All
practically overnight and for free. No smoke and mirrors about it.

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