The word ‘Open Source’, a distinct combination of words that has let to create an ecosystem of self evolving production of ideals and thoughts. If we define the word ‘Open’, it would certainly mean allowing access or passage through something that is empty in space. We can assume by saying filling up the gap or filling up the void.
The word source would define to an object or a thing from which some or many things originate or can be obtained. Now in context to the joining of these two words we would come up to a statement, stating that it is to originate from a point a thing which has been allowed access to everyone that gets exposed to it.
Lets talk about, Tim Berners-Lee, born in the United Kingdom, 8th June 1955, he worked as an English Independent contractor at CERN in switzerland. Tim created something by 1990 for which a lot of companies wanted him to patent it, then in 1993, in the University of California, a person named by Micheal Doyle claims to patent the same technology that Tim didn't. Now did Tim create?.
Now to take away, just imagine this article you are reading on your phone or browser and all that the web has brought you, if all of a sudden became proprietary, technologies like Linux, Web Servers, Content Management Systems, even dev.to might not even be possible, in this due 30 years of time, from the creation of the web.
It has only been possible because open access was given to people like Ben Halpern, Jess Lee and Peter Frank. Imagine not having a youtube or a reddit. Concepts like free to play are branches of open sources, where not only it gives open access to all but new Internet Green Possibilities of seeding money to its creators and this is where in a point of time, minds collide and new opportunities of endless galaxies are formed, for us to create planets in them, some small some large.
So to take from all this information, I'd say, learn and teach back, collect and create back, knowledge is like abundant rain falling on earth, which makes the soil fertile that absorbed the rain and brought forth vegetation, fruits and grass in abundance.
Another portion of it was hard, so it collected and the people benefited from it by utilizing it for drinking for them and their animals. They irrigated it for cultivation, now the third was barren which could neither hold the water nor bring forth vegetation and it gave no benefits. It's called a desert.