We should talk less about public goods funding and more about open source funding

One topic that has been dear to me for a long time is the question of how to fund public goods .

我长期以来一直关心的一个话题是如何为公共产品提供资金的问题。

If there is a project that provides value to a million people (and there's no fine-grained way to choose who gets the benefit and who doesn't), but each person only gets a small amount of benefit, then it's quite possible that no single person will find it in their interest to fund the project, even if the project is extremely valuable overall.

如果有一个项目为一百万人提供价值（并且没有细粒度的方法来选择谁受益、谁不受益），但每个人只获得少量利益，那么很可能没有一个人会发现资助该项目符合他们的利益，即使该项目总体上非常有价值。

The language of "public goods" has a century-long heritage in economics .

“公共物品”这个词在经济学中有着百年的传承。

In digital ecosystems, especially decentralized digital ecosystems, public goods are extremely important : in fact, there's a strong case that the average good that someone might want to produce is a public good .

在数字生态系统中，尤其是去中心化的数字生态系统中，公共物品极其重要：事实上，有充分的理由表明，某人可能想要生产的平均物品是公共物品。

Open source software, academic research into cryptographic and blockchain protocols, openly available education resources, and many more things are all public goods.

开源软件、密码学和区块链协议的学术研究、开放的教育资源等等都是公共产品。

However, the term "public good" has major challenges.

然而，“公共利益”一词面临着重大挑战。

Particularly:

特别是：

To me, these two problems are related: a big part of the reason why the term "public good" is vulnerable to social gaming is precisely the fact that the definition of "public good" is stretched so easily .

对我来说，这两个问题是相关的：“公共利益”一词容易受到社交游戏的影响，很大一部分原因正是“公共利益”的定义如此容易被延伸。

Let's see what happens when you search for the phrase "building a public good" on Twitter.

让我们看看当您在 Twitter 上搜索“建设公共利益”一词时会发生什么。

I did this right now, and here are some of the first results:

我现在就这样做了，以下是一些初步结果：

You can keep scrolling and find many projects using the phrase "we're building a public good" to describe themselves.

您可以继续滚动并找到许多使用“我们正在建设公共利益”这句话来描述自己的项目。

The point of this is not to criticize the individual projects; I know little about both of the above and they may well be excellent projects.

这样做的目的并不是要批评个别项目；而是要批评它们。我对上述两个项目都知之甚少，但它们很可能都是优秀的项目。

However, both of these examples are commercial projects that have their own tokens.

然而，这两个例子都是拥有自己代币的商业项目。

There is nothing wrong with being a commercial project, and there is often nothing wrong with launching your own token.

作为一个商业项目并没有什么问题，推出自己的代币也往往没有什么问题。

However, it says something about the term "public good" when it so easily gets diluted to the point where, today, it often seems to just mean "project" .

然而，它说明了“公共利益”这个词的一些含义，因为它很容易被淡化到今天，它通常似乎只意味着“项目”。

As an alternative to "public goods", let's think about the phrase "open source".

作为“公共物品”的替代词，让我们考虑一下“开源”这个词。

If you think about some central examples of things that are clearly digital public goods, you will find that they are all open source:

如果你思考一些明显是数字公共产品的核心例子，你会发现它们都是开源的：

And on the flip side, open source projects seem to be by default public goods.

另一方面，开源项目似乎默认是公共产品。

You can certainly come up with counterexamples: if I write a piece of software that is heavily tailored toward my personal workflow, and I put it up on github, the majority of the value created by the project may still accrue to me personally.

你当然可以想出反例：如果我编写了一款专门针对我个人工作流程定制的软件，并将其放在 github 上，那么该项目创造的大部分价值可能仍然归我个人所有。

However, the act of open-sourcing (as opposed to keeping it private) is certainly a public good with very diffuse benefit.

然而，开源行为（而不是保持私有）无疑是一种公共产品，具有非常分散的利益。

A really nice thing about the term "open source" is that has a clear and well-agreed definition .

“开源”这个术语的一个真正优点是它有一个清晰且公认的定义。

The FSF's Free Software Definition and the OSI's Open Source Definition have stood for decades, and there are natural ways to extend these definitions to fields of endeavor other than software (eg.

FSF 的自由软件定义和 OSI 的开源定义已经存在了几十年，并且有自然的方法可以将这些定义扩展到软件以外的领域（例如，软件领域）。

writing, research).

写作、研究）。

In the crypto space, the inherently stateful and multi-party nature of applications, and the new vectors of centralized fragility and control that these things imply, do mean that we need to extend the definition somewhat: open standards , the insider attack test and the walkaway test introduced in this post can be a valuable addition to the FSF + OSI definitions.

在加密领域，应用程序固有的状态和多方性质，以及这些事物所暗示的中心化脆弱性和控制的新向量，确实意味着我们需要在某种程度上扩展定义：本文中介绍的开放标准、内部攻击测试和无人测试可以是对 FSF + OSI 定义的有价值的补充。

So what is the difference between "open source" and "public goods"?

那么“开源”和“公共产品”有什么区别呢？

Well, we can start off by asking the bot for examples:

好吧，我们可以首先向机器人询问示例：

I personally simply disagree with the claim that the examples in the first category are not public goods.

我个人完全不同意第一类例子不是公共物品的说法。

A project having a high barrier to entry to contribute does not preclude it from being a public good, and neither does corporations benefiting from the project.

参与贡献门槛较高的项目并不妨碍其成为公共产品，从该项目中受益的企业也不妨碍其成为公共产品。

Also, a project can absolutely be a public good while things around it are private goods.

而且，一个项目绝对可以是公共物品，而其周围的事物则是私人物品。

The second category is more interesting.

第二类就比较有趣了。

First of all, we should note that all five examples are in physical space, rather than digital space.

首先，我们应该注意到，所有五个例子都是在物理空间，而不是数字空间。

Hence, if we want to focus on digital public goods, the above examples give no reason to oppose just focusing on "open source" .

因此，如果我们想关注数字公共产品，上面的例子没有理由反对只关注“开源”。

But what if we do want to also cover physical goods?

但如果我们确实想涵盖实物商品怎么办？

Even the crypto space has its share of enthusiasm for better governing physical things and not just digital things; in a sense, that's the whole point of network states .

即使是加密货币领域也对更好地管理物理事物而不仅仅是数字事物抱有热情。从某种意义上说，这就是网络状态的全部意义。

Here, we can make an observation: while providing these things at local scale is an "infrastructure building" problem, and can be done open source or closed source, the most efficient way to provide these things at global scale generally ends up involving...

在这里，我们可以观察到：虽然在本地范围内提供这些东西是一个“基础设施建设”问题，并且可以开源或闭源完成，但在全球范围内提供这些东西的最有效方法通常最终涉及......

actual open source.

真正的开源。

Clean air is the most obvious example: there has been lots of research and development , much of it open source, to help people worldwide enjoy cleaner air.

清洁空气是最明显的例子：已经进行了大量的研究和开发，其中大部分是开源的，以帮助全世界的人们享受更清洁的空气。

Open source can help make any kind of public infrastructure easier to deploy worldwide.

开源可以帮助任何类型的公共基础设施更容易在全球范围内部署。

The problem of how to provide physical infrastructure at a local scale effectively is still important - but the problem applies equally to democratically run communities and to corporations.

如何在当地范围内有效地提供有形基础设施的问题仍然很重要，但这个问题同样适用于民主管理的社区和公司。

National defense is an interesting case.

国防是一个有趣的例子。

Here, I would argue the following: if you build a project for a national defense reason that you would not feel comfortable open-sourcing, then chances are that while it may be a public good at the local scale, it's likely not a public good at the global scale.

在这里，我想提出以下观点：如果您出于国防原因构建一个项目，而您不愿意开源，那么很可能它可能在本地范围内是公共利益，但在全球范围内可能不是公共利益。

Innovation in weapons is the most obvious example.

武器创新是最明显的例子。

Sometimes, one side in a war has a much stronger moral case than the other, and it's justified to help it with offensive operations, but on average, building technology to improve military capabilities does not improve the world.

有时，战争中的一方比另一方有更强的道德理由，帮助其进行进攻行动是合理的，但平均而言，开发技术来提高军事能力并不能改善世界。

The exceptions (national-defense projects that one would want to open source) would likely be "defense" capabilities that are actually about defense ; one example might be decentralized agriculture, electricity and internet infrastructure that can help people stay fed, functional and connected in challenging environments.

例外情况（想要开源的国防项目）可能是实际上与防御有关的“防御”能力；一个例子可能是分散的农业、电力和互联网基础设施，它们可以帮助人们在充满挑战的环境中保持食物充足、功能正常和保持联系。

Hence, here too it feels like shifting focus from "public goods" to "open source" is actually the best thing to do.

因此，在这里，将焦点从“公共产品”转移到“开源”实际上也是最好的选择。

Open source should not mean "it's equally virtuous to build whatever as long as it's open source"; it should be about building and open-sourcing things that are maximally valuable to humanity.

开源不应该意味着“只要是开源的，构建任何东西都是同样的美德”；它应该是关于构建和开源对人类最有价值的东西。

But distinguishing which projects are worth supporting and which projects are not is already well-understood to be the primary task of public goods funding mechanisms.

但区分哪些项目值得支持、哪些项目不值得支持，已成为公共产品融资机制的首要任务，这一点已被广泛理解。