Old Romans distinguished between three kinds of properties:

1. res privatae, things that belong to a person or a family,
2. res publicae, things built for public use and
3. res communes, things that are used by all, like air and water.

Since then, we did lot to make as much things private as possible. We even invented patent offices to privatize ideas. We prevent spreading of even those ideas that might provide a benefit for a society greater than inventor’s interest.

Several years ago, Eric S. Raymond wrote in The Cathedral and the Bazaar:

When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise Your program doesn’t have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future.

Today we don’t have to present a promise. We can present only an idea. Non working, incomplete, not convincing, even one that might never work.   

More the idea is used, more valuable it becomes.