An idea is really rather like a very abstract, high-level kind of source-code. And are we not convinced that open-source is a good, if not the superior, way?

An idea is really rather like a very abstract, high-level kind of source-code. And are we not convinced that open-source is a good, if not the superior, way? In itself, duplication and spread of ideas is firmly defensible on Kantian grounds as the moral action. And surely in principle, freedom of non-rivalrous goods is desirable economically too. There is the claim of monopoly protection being an encouragement to production, yet the evidence for it is practically non-existent. While we are probably all prone to an impulse of self-interest such as described in the blog-post, it does not seem the rational choice.