The Tradition of Knowledge as a Metaphor for Open Source, Free Software and Open Content

The article, 'A society that shares: India's tradition of knowledge uses the metaphor of India and the tradition of knowledge as a powerful metaphor for allowing access to knowledge - as well as the manner in which the ideal was subverted:

Anyone with even a passing interest in India knows that India has a rich tradition of intellectual inquiry. Over several millennia, India has been home to mathematicians who calculated the orbit of the earth around the sun with astonishing accuracy, the intensely evolved spiritual traditions of yoga, the ancient system of medicine called ayurveda and many others. India was also home to the first university in the world, the Nalanda University. Set up in the fifth century, the university had over 10,000 students and 1500 teachers. Even the word Nalanda means "one who is insatiable in giving."...

...Anyone with even a passing interest in India also knows that India's caste system was (and remains) one of the greatest blights in the history of this country. The traditional system of social stratification in ancient India categorized people into four classes, Brahmana (scholars), Kshatriya (warriors or politicians), Vaishya (mercantiles) and Shudra (service providers). In the initial period, the caste system was flexible and the caste one belonged to was determined on the basis of merit. For example, the word 'Brahmin" literally means, "One who knows Lord Bramha, the creator of the Universe." Thus any individual could merit the status of a brahmin by virtue of spiritual practices that helped them realize their unity with the creator of the universe.

Over centuries this meritocratic setup got hijacked and subverted into an exploitative system where one's status was determined by birth. Thus, to be a Brahmin, you had to be born into a Brahmin family and knowledge of the sacred scriptures could be acquired only through inheritance. The lower castes were considered "untouchables" and were ruled with an iron hand by the upper castes. Knowledge had now become proprietary and it was decreed that if a lower caste person heard the sacred scriptures they should be punished by pouring molten lead into their ears. The repercussions of this divisive system are still being felt in India millenia later...

It's really a great article, and I recommend reading it. Of course, it's a story of Indian culture which most people are unfamiliar with; the depth of the story may be lost on people. India may be a bridge too far.

Perhaps the Royal Society may be a better metaphor for people of the West. Consider what James Gleick wrote in Isaac Newton, related to the Royal Society in the era of Isaac Newton:

Like no institutions before it, the Royal Society was born dedicated to information flow. It exalted communication and condemned secrecy. "So far are narrow conceptions of a few provate Writers, in a Dark Age, from being equal to so vast a design," its founders declared. Science did not exist - not as an institution, not as an activity - but they conceived it as a public enterprise. They imagined a global network, an "Empire in Learning." Those striving to grasp the whole fabric of nature

...ought to have their eyes in all parts, and to receive information from every quarter of the earth, they ought to have a constant universal intelligence: all discoveries should be brought to them: The Treasuries of all former times should be laid open before them.¹

There is a parallel here which most would miss in a modern context, where knowledge is seen as a commodity instead of a means to accumulating more knowledge. Let's add a twist on this Native American Proverb:

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

Becomes:

We do not inherit knowledge from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

It is not about socialism or communism, as those with a lack of regard for continuance would call Open Source, Free Software and Open Content. Far from it. In it's cooperative and competitive aspects, these manners of dealing with knowledge as a matter of continuance of society instead of property.

Our knowledge is at this level because we are standing on the shoulders of giants, perhaps some would have us stand on the shoulders of midgets (figuratively speaking, of course).

[t:Prokofy Neva], among others, have called me a 'socialist' for this perspective. That is, of course, silly. However, the challenge to them is to demonstrate a viable method of continuance of knowledge which they will not call socialist in nature; their labels do not make truth. The gauntlet has been dropped, and it has been dropped from the height of those who would stand on the shoulders of giants.

¹'History of the Royal Society', Thomas Sprat