Is it Possible that what we believe is incorrect?

[davidpbrown]

That seems only to suggest an obvious difference in motivation between the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of money. In an economic crisis, such a difference might become more obvious.

However, what open source has brought is beyond either of those previous models of funding. The best of what mankind can do, follows from motivation to do better, rather than looking to get a quick reward.

While shooting for the blue sky, of course, usually does fall short.. such efforts are important. If you worry too much about the short or medium term, then you might get some financial gain from that but at least with open source your legacy is available for others to pick up and improve on.

So, perhaps open source is a mix of the best of both forms of previous efforts to develop what is new.

[jae208]

"During the Golden Quarter, we saw a boom in public spending on research and innovation. The taxpayers of Europe, the US and elsewhere replaced the great 19th‑century venture capitalists. And so we find that nearly all the advances of this period came either from tax-funded universities or from popular movements. The first electronic computers came not from the labs of IBM but from the universities of Manchester and Pennsylvania. (Even the 19th-century analytical engine of Charles Babbage was directly funded by the British government.) The early internet came out of the University of California, not Bell or Xerox. Later on, the world wide web arose not from Apple or Microsoft but from CERN, a wholly public institution. In short, the great advances in medicine, materials, aviation and spaceflight were nearly all pump-primed by public investment. But since the 1970s, an assumption has been made that the private sector is the best place to innovate."


http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-has-human-progress-ground-to-a-halt/


Very interesting article would highly recommend reading it.