About these homes and at the intersections of the roads in this nomadic ‘city’ are the gardens. Each is unique. One may centre around an unusually-shaped stump or an arrangement of stones or a graceful bit of wood. They may contain fragrant herbs or bright flowers or any combination of plants. One notable one has at its heart a bubbling spring of steaming water. Here grow plants with fleshy leaves and exotically-scented flowers, denizens of some warmer clime brought here to delight the mountain-dwellers with their mystery. Often visitors leave gifts in the gardens when they depart, a wooden carving or a graceful pot or perhaps merely an arrangement of bright pebbles. The gardens belong to no one, and all tend them.

Robin Hobb, Assassins Quest.
Great Britain: Harper Voyager, 1998

When rading this passage of this book (which is part of the Farseer Trilogy) I could not help but think about Open Source projects. If you did not had the same thought when reading the text, go read it again. It is a beautiful analogy.

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