Embedded in proprietary systems, or as standalone applications unto themselves, open source technologies, including the ubiquitous Linux operating system, are free to use, and consequently, challenging to value in economic terms.
As recommended by Nobelist Elinor Ostrom, the stewardship of such shared resources requires the incentive of an economic value on a free good, as well as structuring appropriate governance of these resources. Just as climate advocates have priced natural resources as assets to safeguard their protection, the open source community under the Linux Foundation is working to identify a measure of the economic value of open technologies, in an effort to steward this method of global technological innovation.
