- Sharing
Sharing is the joint use of a resource or space. In its narrow sense, it refers to joint or alternating use of an inherently finite good, such as a common pasture or a
timeshare d residence. It is also the process of dividing and distributing. Apart from obvious instances, which we can observe in human activity, we can also find many examples of this happening naturally in nature. When an organism takes in nutrition or oxygen for instance, its internal organs are designed to divide and distribute the energy taken in, to supply parts of its body that need it. Flowers divide and distribute their seeds. In a broader sense, it can also include the free granting of use rights to a good that is capable of being treated as anonrival good , such as information. Still more loosely, "sharing" can actually mean giving something as an outright gift: for example, to "share" one's food really means to give some of it as a gift.Sharing figures prominently in gift economies, but also can play a significant role in market economies, for example in
car sharing .Share housing is a common and informally negotiated example of sharing of householders' labour, (for example, in the form of housework) and communal household goods.The issue of handling shared resources figures prominently in
computer science : for exampletime-sharing is an approach to interactive computing in which a singlecomputer is used to provide apparently simultaneous interactive general-purpose computing to multiple users by sharing processor time.Sharing is a key feature in the developing field of
free software andopen source software , with implications for economics. This is leading to a need to reviewlicensing ,patents andcopyright , and tocontroversy in these areas, as well as new approaches likeCreative Commons and the GPL.References
* Yochai Benkler, Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production, "Yale Law Journal", Vol. 114, 273-358 ( [http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/114-2/Benkler_FINAL_YLJ114-2.pdf PDF] )
* Bruce Perens (2005). [http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.html "The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source"] . Retrieved October 25, 2005.
*"The Unlock Reality (UR) Manuscript and eBook" The Individuals Self-Discovery Trust 2004
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