“Til recently you were online for a reason. I’ve met people in cafés, but never had to leave one because 3 billion people suddenly walked in.”
—STAR SIMPSON, via Twitter108
"直到最近，你上网是有原因的。我在咖啡馆里见过人，但从未因为30亿人突然走进来而不得不离开咖啡馆。”
—STAR SIMPSON, 通过Twitter108
While it feels obvious today that we want to freely share the things we make, the early success of open source captivated scholars and economists because it defied everything we thought we knew about how and why people create.
虽然今天我们想自由分享我们制造的东西感觉很明显，但开源的早期成功吸引了学者和经济学家，因为它违背了我们认为的关于人们如何和为什么创造的一切。
Open source developers were frequently characterized as “hobby” developers (most famously in Bill Gates’s 1976 “Open Letter to Hobbyists,” which we’ll get to later), because the assumption was that only companies could make “real” software. Even Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian’s Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, a 1999 book widely regarded as the definitive text on the economics of information goods, hardly gives open source software a glance, instead treating software as a commodity to be bought and sold by companies.
开放源代码的开发者经常被描述为 "业余 "开发者（最著名的是比尔-盖茨1976年的 "致业余爱好者的公开信"，我们稍后会提到），因为当时的假设是，只有公司才能制造 "真正的 "软件。甚至卡尔-夏皮罗和哈尔-R-瓦里安的《信息规则》。1999年出版的《网络经济战略指南》被广泛认为是信息商品经济学的权威著作，该书对开源软件几乎不屑一顾，而是将软件作为一种商品，由公司来买卖。
Once companies started using open source for commercial purposes, and people realized that these “hobby projects” were able to compete with the software made by paid employees, scholars had to come up with a new framework to explain this behavior.
一旦公司开始将开源用于商业目的，而人们意识到这些 "业余项目 "能够与受薪员工制作的软件竞争，学者们就不得不想出一个新的框架来解释这种行为。
Previously, our understanding of how and why people make things was modeled after Ronald Coase’s theory of the firm, which proposes that firms (i.e., companies, organizations, and other institutions with centralized resources) naturally emerge as a way to reduce transaction costs in the market.109 Coase would’ve told us that only companies make software because, from a coordination standpoint, managing the resources required to pull off such a feat would be most efficiently handled within the same organization.
此前，我们对人们如何以及为什么制造东西的理解是以罗纳德-科斯的公司理论为模型的，该理论提出公司（即公司、组织和其他拥有集中资源的机构）的出现是为了降低市场的交易成本。109科斯会告诉我们，只有公司才会制造软件，因为从协调的角度来看，管理完成这一壮举所需的资源在同一个组织内是最有效的。此前，我们对人们如何以及为什么制造东西的理解是以罗纳德-科斯的公司理论为模型的，该理论提出公司（即公司、组织和其他拥有集中资源的机构）的出现是为了降低市场的交易成本。109科斯会告诉我们，只有公司才会制造软件，因为从协调的角度来看，管理完成这一壮举所需的资源在同一个组织内是最有效的。
By contrast, the open source projects attracting attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s—the Linux kernel, which powers operating systems; Apache, an HTTP server; FreeBSD, an operating system; GNOME, a desktop environment—were produced by distributed groups of developers that transcended employer affiliations.
相比之下，在20世纪90年代末和21世纪初备受关注的开源项目--为操作系统提供动力的Linux内核、HTTP服务器Apache、操作系统FreeBSD、桌面环境GNOME--都是由超越雇主关系的分散的开发者群体制作的。相比之下，在20世纪90年代末和21世纪初备受关注的开源项目--为操作系统提供动力的Linux内核、HTTP服务器Apache、操作系统FreeBSD、桌面环境GNOME--都是由超越雇主关系的分散的开发者群体制作的。
Coase’s theory of the firm fails to explain why these developers would find one another and make software together, despite a lack of both formal contracts and financial compensation. In terms of transaction costs, collaborating on open source software with unaffiliated individuals should be too “expensive,” compared to writing software with one’s coworkers.
科斯的公司理论未能解释为什么这些开发者会找到彼此并一起制作软件，尽管缺乏正式的合同和经济补偿。就交易成本而言，与无关联的个人合作开发开源软件，与与自己的同事一起编写软件相比，应该是太 "昂贵 "了。
But a few people noticed that these open source projects operated like communities, so they instead explained the projects’ behavior by describing them as a commons, meaning a resource that is owned, used, and managed by a community. These communities rely upon self-governed rules, rather than outside intervention, to manage the resource and avoid over-provisioning or depletion.
但有几个人注意到这些开源项目像社区一样运作，所以他们转而将这些项目的行为描述为公地，意思是由社区拥有、使用和管理的资源。这些社区依靠自我管理的规则，而不是外部干预，来管理资源，避免过度供应或耗尽。但有几个人注意到这些开源项目像社区一样运作，所以他们转而将这些项目的行为描述为公地，意思是由社区拥有、使用和管理的资源。这些社区依靠自我管理的规则，而不是外部干预，来管理资源，避免过度供应或耗尽。