Looking at a lot of utopias in Sci Fi (e.g. Star Trek), future technology, while important, is kind of a veneer over the actual fiction which is usually a coherent society aligned with certain cultural values. E.g. Picard explains that in 24th Century, for humanity “the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity” (https://youtu.be/PV4Oze9JEU0 - 3:00). This rests on the assumption that the collective humanity in Star Trek society are driven by those values. Yes they have matter replicators, but as Manu Saadia argues in Trekonomics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekonomics), even those require society and supply chains to be healthy to actually work for humanity’s prospering.

Of all the promising cultural movements in our own real world, Open-Source is consistently the one I come back to as having real humanity-wide empowerment value, and not just centralizing power with a few. However, most people I talk to have never heard of Open-Source, as most of them don’t touch code.

I had the idea of my fictional world having a cultural concept called “The Codestream” - which essentially refers to the entirety of Open-Source, but is treated with a sacred (but not divine) respect. For example, a member of this society might say something like “We draw from The Codestream and we give back to it. It gives us, and all peoples, life.” This basically means: we take programs, code, forked versions from the Open-Source space, and as a sign of respect, we contribute back to Open-Source. These programs run a huge number of functions that allows our societies to function.

I understand that this might evoke a response in some people (as it did when I first put down the name / idea), especially as it may sound “religious”. However, I think it is important to note that many people have argued that post-modern Western society has lost the treatment of almost anything as sacred, to its detriment. Democracy is probably the closest thing to a "sacred" value I can think of in the West. So just trying to stress that I am using the term “sacred” as in “treated with utmost respect”, not as in “divine”.

SO, I’m basically making this post to ask for people’s thoughts / reactions:

    What is your initial response?

    Could you see this spreading as a cultural value in our own real world?

    Is this just a rebranding of Open-Source and entirely unnecessary? Or does giving it the sacred-respect element give it more cultural mobility?

    Has this already come up in FOSS’ 70-yr history?

    Any other thoughts?