Lessig

I would imagine that Cato would be neutral on open source vs closed source software. Either one represents voluntary, cooperative behavior without coercion or force being imposed.

Harder issues would include government policies to promote one or the other. Generally Cato opposes government intervention in the marketplace, but I believe they do acknowledge that governments in some form should exist. So should a government adopt policies like only purchasing Microsoft software, or alternatively, only purchasing open source software?

Probably the libertarian position would be that these decisions should be made solely on local economic grounds - that the government agency in question should decide purely on the basis of total cost of ownership over the lifetime of the product, choosing whatever technology is cheapest and most efficient for that agency's particular requirements.

Another hard question would be patents, and their potential use to suppress open source projects. Some libertarians oppose patents because the government acts to suppress even independently conceived ideas; others see them as consistent with the fundamental right to own property.

I wish there were an organization which specialized in analyzing the many challenging net-related issues from a libertarian perspective. All too often I find myself alone in espousing libertarianism on such issues as Trusted Computing. It would be helpful to be able to point to a think tank that had published white papers on questions like these. The www.cato.org/tech page seems too oriented towards inside-the-beltway analysis that focuses on cable regulation and FCC policies. I'd like to see a more grass-roots and more radically freedom-oriented libertarianism be promoted.

Wow this is great! Since 1999, I've been organizing One Internet Day in the Philippines. Will do one again and make it happen on this day to celebrate OneWebDay as well