FOSS has helped revitalize the academic model of knowledge cultivation which is being adopted by many of today’s information harvesters.

Rice is nice in paradise

Each year in Bali, Indonesian farmers come together to formulate a common irrigation schedule for coordinating water reuse across various levels of the island’s volcanic watershed. Over thousands of years, Bali’s Water Temple culture has organized the sharing of precious resources that has lead to a rhythm of planting and harvest which preserves the ecological balance of their agricultural paradise. It is said that Bali’s pattern of sharing and cooperation emerged because it optimizes the use of the land and water and minimizes the risks of pestilence and disease.

In the 1970’s Bali implemented a new rice cultivation strategy called the “Green Revolution”. Promoted by the government, together with the Asian Development Bank, the new approach was designed to replace the presumably backward practices of the indigenous Water Temple cooperatives. The program introduced genetically modified rice together with modern fertilizers and pesticides. At first, the “Green Revolution” achieved more than a 40% improvement in the rice crop. But then rice yields plummeted while the environment was being poisoned by repeated chemical contamination. The new “miracle rice” turned out to be a genetic monoculture that was far less resistant to pests and disease. The program was a disaster and demonstrated to many Balinese that willy-nilly modernization could not handle the needs of a finely tuned and interdependent ecosystem. Now, once again the practical traditions of Bali’s Water Temple culture are being re-adopted by today’s rice farmers.

“Knowledge wants to be free and increases in refinement and value as it is shared.”

Knowledge is the precious grain of the information age

Knowledge is the precious grain of the information age. It grows best when nurtured and protected by the cooperation and coordination of everyone concerned with its harvest. But today’s global emphasis on cultivating Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) represents a “Gray Revolution” whose excesses can poison the promise of an information paradise and turn it into a wasteland of proprietary economic protectorates.

The rapid growth of software patents together with business process and biological patents reveals a knowledge economy wildly out of balance. The demand for IPR protection across all segments of global trade is producing a pressure to modernize that is felt throughout the developing world. But like “miracle rice”, IPR is made up of weak or single dimensional elements which seek to guarantee their survival by imposing deadly constraints on the larger information community. The consequences stifle forward progress by substituting litigation and royalties for the advancement of knowledge. Sometimes a “miracle patent” captures a trickle of knowledge and tries to enforce a broader stream of claims. At other times it succeeds in grabbing the mountain wellsprings of an entire watershed. The end result is the same. The health and balance of the whole system is compromised. True advancement of knowledge requires the full functioning and interaction of the interdependent parts of the information infrastructure.

With the Free Software and Open Source movements, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons and other efforts, once again the practical traditions of the academic model of knowledge cultivation are being re-introduced and adopted by many of today’s information harvesters. Knowledge wants to be free and increases in refinement and value as it is shared. Unfortunately, wielding IPR into controllable and exploitable economic advantage continues to be an attractive business model. But as witnessed in bringing the excesses of a misguided “Green Revolution” under control, the economic disadvantages of poisoning the health of the knowledge commons must be repeatedly stressed while the greater economic advantages of coordinating and sharing common resources are visibly demonstrated.