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Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software Highlight

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In the second half of the twentieth century, the economist Elinor Ostrom spent decades studying the conditions that lead to a flourishing commons, such as forests, fisheries, irrigation systems, and other common pool resources.* She tried to understand how people produce in a commons, and why some resources are successfully self-managed, thus avoiding the so-called “tragedy of the commons” (wherein resources are depleted by people acting in their own self-interest, rather than in the collective interest) and the need for either market or government intervention.

— Nadia Eghbal

Replicated under Fair Use from Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal.