"Unfortunately, there's a serious superbeing shortage, so patch author J. Random Hacker is left with two choices: sit on the patch, or throw it into the pool for free. The first choice gains nothing. The second choice may gain nothing, or it may encourage reciprocal giving from others that will address some of J. Random's problems in the future. The second choice, apparently altruistic, is actually optimally selfish in a game-theoretic sense."

Do you read what you write (or quote)? If you have this great thing and you don't release it, you're a dick and you deserve to languish in the "what if?" Hell of your own making. But if you do release it, you may make some money and you may make the world a better place. I'm sure if you don't get rich, you can at least drop your own name and maybe get a blowjob out of it.  

As far as the political issue goes, you run into the problem of people living in fear from their and other governments--governments term this in "be afraid of us" or "be afraid of them." I don't think that github translates when a real gun held by a real man can take away your real life--now, sometime in the future when our minds are distributed over networks, then you might have a case for this non-political answer to politics. But for now, 'merica and her allies can throw-up an image of the Taliban and get people to give up freedoms they wouldn't have ever dreamt of before 9/11--of course posting scare articles and rants about Big-Brother government is using the same political scare mechanism--just sayin'.

Honestly, how can anyone be sure that works for coding works in the real world as well, if at all? The coding world is chock-full of Idealist and Rationals and the real world (the far greater percentage of the population) is filled with Guardians and Artisans--a small theoretically minded percent of the population versus an overwhelmingly real-world minded set of the population, who wins? Especially when the greater percentage is holding most of the guns? Now, in some future time when corporate systems take control and the border states have been more thoroughly weened onto the super efficient systems of drone armies and cyber weapons, then we'll have a conversation.

I think if you make a better system that works easy for everyone, you'll be closer to the world you want to live in, but barring being better, stronger, faster, more adaptable than the controlled systems you are competing against, you will need to change the political will of the people. I think you are being myopic when you assert the knowledge age is pervasive enough to compete another way.