BrewDog’s Open-Source Revolution Is at the Vanguard of Postcapitalism

...a very interesting thing just happened. BrewDog, the Scottish-based brewery whose beer outlets are spreading rapidly across the globe, just open-sourced its recipe collection. In a cheeky press release, its founders quipped: “Oh, and if you are from one of the global beer mega corporations and you are reading this, your computer will spontaneously combust, James Bond style, any second now.”...

BrewDog's book "Business for Punks"

...All that could stop the value of information declining close to zero was the construction of anti-competition mechanisms: monopolies, aggressive patent and copyright laws, walled gardens of technology designed to make using free information difficult, networks designed to be used only if you forfeit control of your information to a megacorporation. We’ve seen it all in the past 20 years – but it won’t last. So, the edges of the corporate world are increasingly populated by entrepreneurs who – sometimes unwittingly – take a postcapitalist view of information...

Digital information has value only as long as it can be monopolised by legal force. You can build a business out of information plus monopoly, and it can acquire a hefty market capitalisation. But there is a strong chance it won’t be around in 20 years. And I am talking not only about the “unicorn” companies created in the latest bubble, but household names. If the financial markets worked efficiently, the basic question they would be solving, right now, is: how do we channel money into businesses making stuff that cannot be copied and pasted. Instead, they channel money into corporations whose intellectual-property lawyers look powerful now, but will some day be as powerless as those trying to make money out of keeping beer recipes secret.