The tale of two recipes
Imagine two scenarios of sharing a cake recipe – a simple analogy that perfectly illustrates why Open Source is critical for our digital liberation.
In the first scenario, you’re at a friend’s dinner party where they serve a chocolate cake that transports you to new heights of pleasure. When you ask for the recipe, they happily share it, only requesting you keep it within circle of people who you trust, as it’s their grandmother’s creation.
You honor this request while baking it for other friends, creating meaningful connections through shared joy. Soon, more friends request “grandma’s recipe” at gatherings, and you’re delighted to oblige because it’s about spreading happiness among those you care about – always respecting the initial request to keep it within clo.
In the second scenario, you encounter a fundamentally different approach. At another friend’s dinner, they also serve an amazing cake, but when you ask for the recipe, they refuse – offering instead to sell you the cake whenever needed.
Their reasoning? They claim they’re the only one qualified to make it properly, and by keeping the recipe secret, they hope to maintain a monopoly on this particular cake and it’s quality.
Being kind, you don’t argue and order their cake for your next celebration.
While they assure you they use only high-quality ingredients from local farmers, someone mentions seeing them buy processed ingredients from the supermarket. Unfortunately, you have no way to verify this.
When you mention disliking cinnamon, they insist it must stay – take it or leave it. No room for personal preferences or modifications.
This second scenario perfectly illustrates how big tech and proprietary software operate. They keep their “recipes” hidden, participating in communities only for financial gain rather than genuine collaboration.
What’s worse, these digital gatekeepers often draw inspiration from openly shared “grandmother’s recipes” – using open-source foundations without properly acknowledging or sharing benefits with the original creators.
The digital liberation movement
Keeping code and technology open isn’t just about fairness – it drives societal progress through:
Transparency and trust: Open Source software allows you to inspect, modify, and improve the code, building community trust through radical transparency. Like with our cake metaphor, you gain access to the recipe and can add dates if you love them, making the creation even better for yourself and others.
Equal access: Open Source enables diverse individuals and organizations to use high-quality software without expensive licensing fees, helping bridge the digital divide and creating equal opportunities in education and employment. In cake terms, you bake on your own terms with ingredients you can afford, always more economical than store-bought options, and share freely with friends and family.
Common good development: By treating software as a public good, open-source initiatives enhance public services like healthcare and education, prioritizing people over profit. Like those friends who share their grandmother’s recipe because they value community joy over personal gain.
Regenerative practices: Open source fosters regeneration by providing tools that communities can adapt to local needs without high costs, enabling environmentally friendly and economically accessible solutions. It’s like baking a cake for your neighbor who fixed your bike when you couldn’t afford to pay them – creating cycles of mutual support.
Your digital consciousness
As you can see, it’s worth staying mindful of the technology you use, and from time ask yourself a critical question: are your technological choices contribute to societal progress, or are you trapped in a system that sees you merely as a product – a source of income and nothing more?
The choice, as with most things in life, is yours to make. But it worth to acknowledge here that choosing Open Source, you take a small but meaningful step toward a regenerative approach to technology – one that nurtures community, transparency, and environmental protection rather than extraction and control.
These choices ripple outward when made by many, becoming powerful statements about the kind of digital world we want – one which enriches us as a society rather than exploiting us as consumers.
JO ✮⋆˙