Let's take the coffee analogy a little further. Not only is some hippie giving away coffee with a "do no evil" license, but just down the road there is a large market, where many people have come together to give away their own special variants of coffee.
Over time, the many and diverse people in the market (which some might call a hippie commune, but the MBAs in the crowd would probably disagee) have agreed on some common best practices for licensing their coffee, which allow it to be mixed to form special blends etc. Some of the best practices are outright subversive, and have led, through network effects, to some of the coffee from this market appearing in many Starbucks coffees -- which are marketed as "fair trade". Although many of the people who buy them aren't aware of the details of how this obscure market has made the world a better place.
Now back to our hippie and his coffee, which doesn't meet the norms of the market, so cannot be included in its blends, and cannot contribute to the ongoing network effect. Is the hippie actually going to leave the world better than it was before?
The market down the street and Starbucks will decry the hippie for trying to prevent them from using his beans. But they are his beans and he has every right to set terms and conditions of sale. His goal is that those who do receive his beans and make special blends, etc. will give the same freedom to those who end up drinking the coffee as they have with his coffee beans. If the hippie's goal is coffee drinker freedom, he is likely going to leave the world a better place. If his goal is spreading his beans far and wide regardless of the restrictions on the coffee drinker at the end, he won't reach his goal.
I thought the hippie's goal was to sleep at night, now we have to compute the global utility function of his whole existence based on what Starbucks is doing? How does this apply to what raganwald is talking about? Perhaps this extension of the analogy has gone off the rails a bit.
Over time, the many and diverse people in the market (which some might call a hippie commune, but the MBAs in the crowd would probably disagee) have agreed on some common best practices for licensing their coffee, which allow it to be mixed to form special blends etc. Some of the best practices are outright subversive, and have led, through network effects, to some of the coffee from this market appearing in many Starbucks coffees -- which are marketed as "fair trade". Although many of the people who buy them aren't aware of the details of how this obscure market has made the world a better place.
Now back to our hippie and his coffee, which doesn't meet the norms of the market, so cannot be included in its blends, and cannot contribute to the ongoing network effect. Is the hippie actually going to leave the world better than it was before?