I recently wrote about the Thing Tracker Network, but was very brief in my argumentation, why it is so important. Now I feel a bit bad about that, but unfortunately I stumbled again upon two articles that are the foundation for my opinion on this.
The articles were written by Christopher Lee (I guess it is not the Christopher Lee), and were published on the blog of John Baez (that I can recommend a lot, if you like Math and Computing). They are writing not about 3D printing and the TTN, but about a similar approach to a similar problem, where things are already in a very advanced stage of walledness, namely Scientific Publishing. There the system degenerated so much, that today Scientists do the work that is necessary to do the research, to write it up and help the Journals with peer review, all without compensation, but in the end the universities have to pay (sometimes a lot) to get access to these results. The situation and the arising problems are very similar to the publication of models for 3D printing, and many of the arguments apply. So without further ado: