Dear Editor,

I was very pleased to read the article in today's Guardian on how the open-source idea is spreading to other areas besides computer software ("Secrets laid bare"). It confirms my impression that here we have a revolutionary idea and ideology that might yet help save the world from its most "successful" and rapacious species (Homo sapiens, indeed!) and make it a far more just and humane place in the process.

In an earlier email ("Helping the poor AND saving the planet"), in response to an article and today's leader on world poverty, I refer to the challenge of creating an alternative, sustainable socio-economic order rooted in our more enlightened, human nature. In facing up to this challenge, the spirit of open source, I believe, has an essential role to play.

Many business-minded people fear open source as being anti-commercial, but to me this is what makes it so attractive, because it is commercialism - of the kind that we are so familiar with - that creates not only great wealth, but also an inhumane, grossly unjust and unsustainable society, causing us to plunder and spoil our planet.

www.spaceship-earth.org