Let’s take care of the Common Goods by participating

 

If you see waste in a forest, you can inform the guard, but the ideal is to look after the forest between all of us.

You can see rubbish in a forest and think, “how dirty” and do nothing about it, not even tell anyone.

But if between all of us we are able to take some kind of action, to take part, to maintain and protect our common goods like the forests, etc, at the end it will revert into the common good of our community.

Ostrom noted in a study about a hundred protected forests in fourteen different countries, that shows that the cooperation between the local people is more important to preserve those goods, than any national government, state workers or any kind of supervision of these forests.

The Nobel price in Economy Elinor Ostrom, in an article about the best ways of managing the common goods in OnTheCommons

Extrapolating

Same thing happens with the Free Software and the Open Source. We can see something that doesn’t work properly and maintain passive while thinking “this is not working” or “why is this ununderstood” etc. But the ideal situation is that between all of the people do participate in improving this common good. Do not propose, do:

  • Lets inform about the errors, or bugs, about typographycal mistakes
  • Lets think and suggest possible solutions, proposes.
  • Even we can try to invent and resolve ourselves
  • Lets translate to our own language
  • etc

At the end between the all of us and thanks to the participation it will revert to the common good of all…