by Sebastian Benthall

Maybe what unites the open-* movement is a kind of personality.

Discomfort with authority, desire for autonomy, but a yearning for community nonetheless.

The movement aspires to a society that supports itself and acts collectively without preventing any of its constituents from being their authentic selves.

Hence all the importance of aggregating patterns from individuals and then using those patterns to inform (but not coerce) other individuals. Hence the active politics of forking and merging. Hence the flattened hierarchies. And so on.