Open source was fine for desktop computers, but what if the network becomes the computers, then it matters less that we have Linux on our computers, instead we need to make sure the services are open!

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The rise of the ‘network as the computer’, web 2.0, and social software architectures – enabling wide scale interactions between individuals – necessitates asking new ethical, economic and legal questions.

Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term web 2.0, recently called for a revision of the Open Source definition: “We need a set of guidelines for open services that is as thoughtful and provocative as the original open source definition�. He makes a crucial point. If people and their data are at the heart of web 2.0, we need to discuss the limits of “openness�.

If social activity has become an economic product in its own right, do we need distributed ownership and investment structures? What are the ethics that make community driven sites sustainable?