[...] today’s open source communities have the potential to serve as gateways to a more radical politics, one that pushes for the decommodification of not just information but also the material resources needed to sustain the production of information.

What’s needed, then, is a leap of faith: from feeling gratitude towards corporations for funding open-source projects to questioning why we allow these corporations to amass the wealth that enables them to do so in the first place. What’s needed is a movement to resist the commodification of information in all its forms—whether that’s software, content, or using personal data to increase product sales through targeted advertising—and diminishing the power of these corporate giants in the process.

The open-source movement could—and should—be more than just another way to develop code. Fulfilling its radical potential will involve expanding the scope of the movement by linking it with a broader struggle for decommodification. This will require a massive political battle, challenging not just individual corporations and institutions but the neoliberal state itself.