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Highlights
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The history of computing might have gone in quite a different direction if Bill Gates had not been involved. Open source software saves consumers money. Wikipedia, built on a collaborative model, is now vastly better than the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the Encyclopedia Britannica had run the Microsoft playbook early on, perhaps it could have “knifed the baby.” But nobody would be well-served by this except Britannica’s owners. Some have compared a fully open source model to “Coca-Cola Co. releasing its formula” and indeed, tycoons like Gates would insist that if Coca-Cola’s formula could be copied, there would be no incentive to innovate. But we can see how actually, the opposite is often true. If anyone could make a Coca-Cola, because the formula was public and free to use, we would swiftly see (as we did in software) endless new variations popping up as people were free to experiment and transform the formula. With Coca-Cola the only ones who can conduct R&D, “innovations” are driven by Coke’s marketing strategies.
✏️ Interesting “what if” situation and how capitalism ruins things from the get go. Wikipedia is a great example of what went right and do a negative what-if around.