Open Source Knowledge

One-line definition: The open sharing of learning, expertise, and knowledge artifacts in public — where information persists and compounds online — as distinct from the licensing model of open-source software.

Distinguished from Open Source: this concept is about knowledge, pedagogy, and learning in public; Open Source is about software licensing and development economics. Some material (von Neumann’s patent suppression, code-as-living-knowledge) genuinely bridges both.

How sources describe it

• Online knowledge compounds in a way books never could — “websites never die,” so information persists and accumulates rather than freezing at publication. The Death of Expertise
• Publication is the start of responsibility, not the end — the book-as-snapshot gives way to knowledge as a living repository that requires continuous tending. Working in Public
• “Community is the thing that gives value to the commodity” — knowledge artifacts derive value from ongoing engagement, not from being finished. Working in Public
• A Cold War open-source instinct: von Neumann deliberately kept his work “in the public domain” to accelerate the whole field rather than capture it. The Man From The Future
• Active, triangulated reading is the method — building on what others have already curated and cross-referencing across sources rather than starting from scratch. How To Read a Book
• Writing is the core skill of distributed knowledge work — the prompt “what other types of work can you open source?” reframes async, written communication as a way to share expertise openly. Remote — Office Not Required

Where it shows up

• The Death of Expertise — online knowledge as a persistent, compounding commons (with its failure modes).
• Working in Public — maintaining living knowledge; publication as the beginning of responsibility.
• The Man From The Future — von Neumann’s deliberate public-domain strategy.
• How To Read a Book — active, triangulated reading as the discipline of building on shared knowledge.
• Remote — Office Not Required — writing and async work as open knowledge-sharing.

Related concepts

• Open Source — the software-licensing sibling of this concept.
• Active Reading — the consumption-side discipline.
• Republic of Letters — the historical antecedent of an open knowledge commons.
• Investing 101 2.0 — Kyle’s own practice of learning in public.
• Maintenance — why open knowledge decays without active tending.
• Learning in Public — the practice of sharing expertise openly as you go, named directly by Working in Public.
• Compounding — the mechanism by which online knowledge “never dies” and accumulates over time.
• John von Neumann — kept his work in the public domain to accelerate the field, the Cold War open-source instinct described in The Man From The Future.
• Writing — the core skill of distributed, async knowledge work per Remote — Office Not Required.
• Knowledge Economy — the broader economic frame for knowledge as a value-bearing commons.

Quick Capture links — June 29th, 2021

Reading-list links from Kyle’s June 29th, 2021 Roam daily-note “Quick Capture” log.

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vb8WWbsVyEJzl66_qqtZfFr2uLL07Y7SJH5XKldjDPY/edit
• https://willrobbins.org/questions/
• https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

Knowledge Management Systems (February 2022)

A capture from February 28th, 2022: Stripe, Amazon and Bridgewater all run internal knowledge management systems — the private-company analogue of the open-source-knowledge argument, and the counter-example worth reasoning about, since those systems are deliberately not open.

Also flagged there: Michael Nielsen’s Reinventing Discovery on why ideas are different from software, and ghostknowledge.com.