Does the Mozilla Firefox Annual Report video (see below) resonate with you.

Well, I am and have been a big Free Software / Open Source booster for over a decade now, therefore, yes, that message is one that resonates with me.

I don’t know the level of overlap between the OWS folks and FLOSS crowd, though I’m certainly sympathetic to both. I can say that the FLOSS ecosystem has worked for things that have taken lots more time and effort than writing a browser (the Linux kernel and the MySQL project come to mind), though I don’t know how that translates to “capital”.

I suspect that there’s a lot more potential for folks to get together and produce things in this way. It’s a proven software development model, and it’s slowly working its way into hardware as well, particularly with the advent of affordable(ish) 3D printers and Thingiverse.

There is a more fundamental idea here that I think can be generalized: a voluntary acceptance by CEOs of lower salaries, less emphasis on the bottom line when a company is already making plenty of money, and a focus on producing quality products for consumers rather than wealth for shareholders. It’s the old American dream: that success comes from innovation and effort rather than market manipulation and luck.