Open-Source Capitalism
People assume "if it's open, it cannot capture value." Open-Source Capitalism shows how open networks fund themselves while staying open. It aligns markets with the commons so value created in public flows back to the people who build, maintain, and share.
The Idea
Open-source capitalism merges free-market dynamics with the transparency and collaboration of open-source software. It is an economic framework designed to make open networks financially sustainable, where building for the common good becomes profitable and scalable.
Why It Matters
Capitalism is productive yet uneven in who it serves. Open source is pro-innovation and pro-consumer yet underfunded. Open-source capitalism bridges the two so doing the right thing becomes financially rational.
The Problem
Capitalism's force
High productivity with inequality and neglected commons, where profits concentrate in private firms while shared infrastructure, communities, and ecosystems are treated as expendable inputs.
Open source underfunded
Critical digital infrastructure relies on donations or sponsors, leaving maintainers burned out, upgrades delayed, and essential systems vulnerable to both neglect and corporate capture.
Weak incentives for builders
Contributors rarely capture the value they create, so the most impactful work for the commons is often unpaid, unstable, or sidelined in favor of proprietary projects that can raise capital.
DAOs and DeFi underperform
Decentralized in name yet fragile in structure and revenue, with governance tokens that drift, treasuries that sit idle, and no reliable way to fund long term maintenance or real world operations.
The Four Principles
Coordination Through a Marketplace Platform
Builder marketplaces coordinate developers, designers, and product teams on transparent roadmaps. Efficient collaboration replaces ad-hoc contribution.
Profits Before Distribution
Revenue-Generating Hubs use open-source products to serve users. A portion of profit flows back to builders and investors through structured retroactive rewards.
Maximizing Value Capture (Commercial Licensing)
Dual licensing blends growth with reciprocation. Open license for collaboration. Commercial license for enterprises that prefer not to share all code.
Making Open Source Investable
Operational Collateral Funds let investors back open networks. Capital enters through instruments like POWt that represent future revenue from open projects.
How It Works
Open Source Capitalism links contributors, capital, and businesses into a single economic loop around shared open-source infrastructure.
Builders contribute code
Builders ship code, documentation, and operations into shared repositories. Their work is tracked in the open and used as the basis for governance, recognition, and future funding decisions.
Capital funds development
Funds, foundations, and other backers provide capital to Operational Collateral Funds (OCFs) that support new features, teams, and experiments with transparent rules for how projects are evaluated and renewed.
Businesses generate revenue
Revenue-Generating Hubs (RGHs) turn the open-source stack into services, products, and integrations for customers, then route a portion of their commercial activity back into the network as fees.
DAOs steer the network
DAOs set priorities, manage shared brand and IP entities, and allocate treasury across OCFs and Operational Hubs so contributors, funders, and operators stay aligned over time.
Capital and contributions circulate through OCF, RGH, and Operational Hubs while DAO and IP entities keep direction and rights aligned.
Together, these pieces form a Scalable Network Organization, a template for open source capitalism that makes decentralization work in practice instead of only in theory.
The Powerhouse Vision
Powerhouse is building the open alternative to Big Tech for the age of AI. Our vision is a world where networks of people, machines, and institutions can coordinate at scale without giving up ownership, privacy, or control.
Open Source Capitalism is the economic foundation for this vision and the basis of the Scalable Network Organization model. It focuses on routing value from real products and services back into shared infrastructure, contributors, and public goods instead of locking it inside centralized platforms.
Achra is the global marketplace for coordination, where networks design workflows, route payments, and manage contributors across many entities as if they were one organization. Use Achra to run day to day operations for SNOs, DAOs, and other distributed teams.
Vetra turns documents into portable, auditable, API ready data so AI agents and applications can plug into the same shared record of agreements, operations, and history. Use Vetra to keep your network's contracts, policies, and processes in sync across tools.