The ancient Greeks had a way of turning universal truths into stories that still resonate thousands of years later. Take Prometheus, for example. The titan who defied the gods by stealing fire and giving it to humans. For his trouble, he was chained to a rock where an eagle feasted on his liver daily. A gruesome punishment, but also a reminder that knowledge and power come with consequences.

Now swap out “fire” for “code,” “knowledge,” or even “open-source software,” and the myth feels eerily modern. Prometheus wasn’t just handing out matches, he was handing out civilization’s first real upgrade. Fire was energy, warmth, technology, survival. Today, we might say the same about shared codebases, open research, or the collective commons of Wikipedia. Tools that once belonged to the few now belong to the many. And the story of what happens when knowledge gets democratized? We’re living it.

If you think about it, open-source communities are modern myths in action. A lone developer burns the midnight oil, cracks a problem, and then uploads their creation to GitHub. From there, others remix, adapt, and spread it until it powers half the internet. Linux is practically the Promethean fire of computing. It started as Linus Torvalds tinkering with a kernel, then grew into the engine that runs everything from Android phones to the servers that stream Netflix. One person’s gift becomes the infrastructure of modern life.

But just like in the myth, there’s tension. Prometheus wasn’t punished because fire was useless. He was punished because it disrupted the established order. When you democratize knowledge, you weaken gatekeepers. Universities once held the keys to research, now preprint servers share it openly. Companies once hoarded code, now open-source projects drive entire industries. The same pattern repeats: the gift empowers the masses, but unsettles the powerful.

The corporate world’s relationship with open source feels downright Olympian. On one hand, they embrace it, because it saves time and money. On the other, they worry about losing control. We see this in license wars, in debates over who “owns” community-driven projects, in tech giants absorbing open-source talent and bending it to their will. The eagle pecking at Prometheus’ liver feels like a metaphor for this tug-of-war: the individual creator pays a price while the wider world benefits.

But let’s not get too tragic. Unlike the Greeks, we don’t need to end every myth in eternal suffering. What’s fascinating is how the Promethean cycle keeps evolving in our era. Take Wikipedia. A wild idea: let anyone edit an encyclopedia. In the early days, critics dismissed it as chaos, full of errors and trolls. But instead of collapsing, it became the default knowledge layer of the web. Fire in the hands of the crowd. It’s imperfect, but powerful. And now, ironically, it’s feeding the very AI models that promise to reshape how we learn again. The torch keeps passing.

There’s also something deeply human about this myth repeating. Stories like Prometheus highlight that knowledge isn’t just a tool, it’s a moral battleground. Do we share it? Do we lock it away? Do we accept the risks of giving power to everyone, not just a select few? Open-source is messy. Projects fork, maintainers burn out, communities fracture. Yet the alternative—a world where knowledge is hoarded—feels colder, darker, like a humanity without fire.

The parallel extends to responsibility, too. The Greeks were reminding themselves that gifts come with consequences. Fire can cook your food, but it can also burn down your home. Code can empower communities, but it can also fuel ransomware. Knowledge is neutral until it’s wielded. Open-source contributors often grapple with this, especially when their tools get weaponized in ways they never intended. It’s the modern version of Prometheus watching his gift change the world in ways he couldn’t control.

And yet, despite the risks, the Promethean impulse persists. People still share. They still give. Not because it’s easy, but because it feels necessary. We’re wired to believe that progress comes from widening the circle of knowledge. Maybe that’s why open-source feels less like an invention and more like an inevitability. Like fire itself, once it’s out there, you can’t put it back in the box.

One thing I love about the Prometheus story is its sense of scale. It’s not about a single invention, it’s about a leap in human capability. Fire wasn’t just warmth, it was metallurgy, agriculture, cities. In the same way, open knowledge isn’t just code. It’s the scaffolding of everything digital: the open protocols of the web, the shared libraries of AI, the collective intelligence we build when knowledge flows freely. You can almost hear the crackle of the fire every time someone types npm install and pulls in a thousand community packages without even thinking about it.

Of course, every generation retells the myth in its own way. Maybe AI will be our next Promethean fire. Models trained on shared knowledge, released (sometimes) openly, spreading capabilities that once belonged only to elite labs. The debates raging now about whether AI should be open or closed, whether its risks outweigh its benefits, sound exactly like the Olympians arguing over fire. Will it liberate? Will it destroy? The answer is yes. Both. That’s the point. Fire always burns, and always illuminates.

So where does that leave us? Maybe with a healthier respect for the double edge of openness. Sharing knowledge will always create friction. It will always upset hierarchies. It will always come with unintended consequences. But it also creates connection, empowerment, and leaps forward that no closed system can replicate. The question isn’t whether to share, it’s how to do it wisely.

Prometheus reminds us that giving away power changes the world, but it also changes the giver. Today’s open-source maintainer might not face an eagle on a rock, but burnout, exploitation, and lack of recognition are very real punishments. If we want the gift to keep flowing, we also need to care for the givers. Because a world without Prometheus types—without people willing to light the torch—is a world left in the dark.

So yes, Prometheus gave fire. But in our era, fire looks like code, knowledge, and open collaboration. And if myth echoes in open knowledge, then maybe we’re still sitting by the same campfire the Greeks imagined, watching the flames leap, arguing over what they mean, and wondering what we’ll build next.