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Over the last year, as I've mulled over various thesis topics, I've often returned to two imprecise concepts, "commons-based approaches" and "open culture", which I am now faced with sorting through in order to focus my research. In particular, now that I'm locking into "open culture" as my central topic, I need to decide whether to incorporate "the commons" or discard it altogether.

If occured to me this afternoon that open source software is better for the environment than closed source software. I did some googling and couldn't find any articles about this concept, so I decided to write my own.

Unfortunately, because it's finals week, this will be brief. So, here are the top three reasons that open source software helps the environment.

1. Open source software saves packaging. That's less plastic and less paper being wasted.

When my prof suggested I read Marcel Mauss's book The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, I'll admit that I was less than thrilled, for several reasons.

First, I'm sick of reading theory translated from French... it tends to be exhausting, circuitous, and self-involved, and I've simply read too much of it lately.