Why should teachers bother to share their planning efforts with the world?

The other day I watched this YouTube video of an open-source "manifesto" given at the 2006 Plone conference by Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center and found myself thoroughly awed at the culture, community, and vision that has grown up in the software movement that makes the technical backbone of Open Planner possible.

Open source software enthusiasts have essentially invented a new mode of social and intellectual production, which Yokai Benckler and other economists and intellectual property lawyers call "distributed production" or commons-based peer-production. Moglen's speech centers on several economic and moral arguments surrounding the importance of this new way of making 21st century stuff...let me see if I can recall them in shorthand, for those of you that don't have an hour to watch Moglen's performance:

1) Software is the new currency for material relations:

The preeminent commodity of the 21st century is software. Software is what defines access to and survival within the marketplace, the political arena, the world's culture.

2) Software has zero marginal cost of production.

For example, each additional copy of Microsoft Office can be produced at no additional cost.

3) In a competitive marketplace, the fair market value of a product with zero marginal cost of production is zero.

Eben creates a fun analogy for this: mathematics...mathematical ideas cost nothing to share. Given this fact, monopoly is the only way to continue earning profit on raw code, and its results are increasingly harmful. Charging people to use an intellectual tool that costs no additional human effort to create is like charging people to use mathematical theorems when they want to build a house.

4)The free software production process results in demonstrably better products.

Case in point, the new, proprietary, Internet Explorer 7.0 is on the day of its release not as good as the free Firefox browser. The quality of software produced by freely associating communities of individuals with mutual needs and interests has demonstrably surpassed those of companies whose primary source of revenue is monopoly over intellectual property.

5) It is immoral to earn a profit on a product that it costs nothing to create another copy of, and which is the critical means of access for others who wish simply to participate in the world economy.

6) Enforce compliance with the GPL:

Enforcement of the General Public User (GPU) license which enables software to be safely shared, and which delimits the terms of use of intellectual goods designated as "common property," has been an important effort in winning the respect, acceptance and understanding of the open source development practice by the business community.

I believe these same ideas apply nicely to the Open Source curriculum development model, and provide a powerfully compelling case for the mission of Open Educator, Inc.:

Curriculum, like software, has zero marginal unit cost of production. Now that paper need not be the primary medium for transmitting information to/between students and colleagues, and the transmission of information is instantaneous, it costs us nothing to have others freely use another "copy" of our curriculum.

Curriculum, like software, provides others access to power, financial security, opportunity, etc. for whom this might not otherwise be the case. The same moral arguments for sharing apply.

Can curriculum created via "commons-based peer-production" methods develop into higher quality products than is currently available via commercial publishers? We're counting on it!