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I don't remember who but someone here on HN once compared closed source vs open source to old school secretive alchemy guilds vs real science. I really liked t

I don't remember who but someone here on HN once compared closed source vs open source to old school secretive alchemy guilds vs real science. I really liked that comparison and I've thought about it a lot since. And here it's worth asking, how did we go from alchemy to science? How did we end up figuring out that openness and transparency is beneficial? I know one thing, it wasn't with licenses. But I'm really curious, because I want to live in the world where open source is the default. I just don't know how we get there.

npteljes 5y ago
How is real science open? Aaron Swartz, for one, killed himself after receiving the punishment for "liberating" academic articles from the digital library he had access to. I also don't see corporations releasing the results of their precious r&d, although, I don't really have insight into this topic. Licenses only matter because there's trademarks and copyright. In places where IP isn't protected as much, they also would not matter, in a way that they would not be necessary. But because stuff can be copyrighted, there also must be a way to share that, aside from liberating it from the copyright of course. I think a close real-life analogue is a potluck. The custom requires that participants bring some food, and in turn can consume from what the others brought. And it's a nice old thing too, with etymology dating back to the 16th century.