Open publishing systems such as Wikipedia and Indymedia state the success of heterarchy which is termed by Axel Bruns in Gatewatching as “Rule by a diverse group, preventing the emergence of a single person, group in control or everybody (a hierarchy, a monarchy or a panarchy).

One of the aspects which I am questioning is the technical open side, which means that the open source publishing system is continuously revisited and readjusted by users, who can hopefully fix bugs and evolve the system.
Well, all of that is great and it would be great if applicable to all software, social media, news websites etc.
Actually, this is the sort of matter I would argue about.
To what extent could we allow the changes to be done by users in all this software?

The web tools are in general the foundation of new ways for people to aggregate and share knowledge and information. In other words structured and definite tools enable people of any sort to interact heterarchically. So the tools should be created wisely according to criteria related to the goal the whole system has been built to pursue.
This would prepare the ground for potential business.

Besides, tools should be provided in a shape which makes the users’ interaction much easier according to the well known usability principles which involve the easy to customise principle. This would provide all sorts of users with a democratic usage of the web tools and as a consequence an equal opportunity to share and interact.

All of the above is related to the fact that we should start thinking to the future, which is not today, obviously.
A future when people will need to get money by these open source systems in a more structured way, beyond advertising.
Actually this is a dangerous transition which all open system developers and publishers will be involved in.
On the other hand it would reduce the noise, canalise the viral spread of information and produce revenue.

However, imagine if one day we had to pay to use Wikipedia. What would happen?
It is a sort of scenario which could completely change the current roles of users and members and the entire open source folk themselves.
Let me know what you think about it.