The tale of the kingdom of toolmakers

A few years later he had become the king of a small kingdom of toolmakers and they all agreed to obey just a few laws on how they wanted to produce their tools and how to enable other people to make use of those. They agreed, that it would be better not to sell the tools to the people, but to give them away for free, so everybody would be able to use their famous tools, and nobody would be left behind, because he could not afford to buy them. They believed that in return the people using their tools should take care of their toolmakers so they would not lack anything.

Each of them would give a reasonable share of what they earned or created with those tools so that the toolmakers would be able to focus on creating and maintaining the tools everybody made use of to make a living. They were inspiring people to share and the people happily used their tools and they returned not just the share they had agreed upon but even ideas and techniques to improve the quality, the usability and the efficiency of these tools.

Since everybody was allowed to take the tools and sell them to others at any price, many of the people running the new tool shops did not even know about the king and his kingdom of toolmakers because they got their tools from somebody else. So these people never showed up in the kingdom with the share that was meant to be the base for the success of the toolmakers. Their tools needed to be maintained and sometimes they needed even newly designed tools, because the ones they got were outdated and did not work together anymore with other modern tools they were selling.

But they did not know who to approach to get a set of upgraded or refurbished tools. So they tried to repair and maintain the tools they were selling as best as they could. But they never reached the famous quality of the original tools anymore, and each of them had to hire and pay their own grinder to satisfy the people who had bought their tools before.

Then again there were tool shop owners, who actually knew about the kingdom and the agreements, but they thought it would be enough if other people shared a portion of their

The people who had bought products and tools from the tool shop owners got angry, because there was nobody who would have been able to take care of what they actually paid for and because their tools were broken and unusable.

After a while they told everybody, that the tools of the kingdom of toolmakers never met their expectations, so they had to buy tools from the large tool factories again. They never came back to any of the tool shops. So many of the shop owners had to wind up their business and to dismiss their grinders.

Now both, the shop owners and the grinders complained about the bad quality of the tools themselves, which they thought to be responsible for the failure of their business. They never came back to the kingdom and decided to sell other tools instead. Now some of the tool shop owners and the people who had bought their tools wanted to find out what happened to the tool makers. They wanted to know why the famous tools had become so infamous that they could not earn their living with them anymore.

Some of them still took care of their tools, but they had to do it in their spare time, so they had to neglect improvements and maintenance. Some of them had just left the kingdom and found another kingdom, where it was easier to make a living as a toolmaker. The king himself had resigned a long time ago, since he already foreshadowed the sellout of his tools. This had been absolutely not in the spirit of the agreements he actually had in mind when he had founded his kingdom, so he had stepped back and handed over his crown to two other toolmakers.

But even those sovereigns had not been able to convince the people that it just needs a small share of their earnings to keep up the impressive work of the famous toolmakers. "Why should we give them anything" - they asked - "when the tools are available for free? What do we get in return for the share we pay? And if we don't get anything in return, why should we pay at all?" - "But you get these famous tools", the sovereigns said, "and you should just make sure that the toolmakers providing you with those can make a living without having to do another job!"

Many of the shop owners could keep up their business and even improve their profit, because their maintainers wouldn't have to take care of the tools anymore. Instead they could focus on the products they are going to create with those tools. Meanwhile we could provide them with the necessary improvements and maintenance. Then again this will reduce the number of patched and rebuilt tools, because there will be a centralized place to go to pick up fixed and improved tools"

His wife already liked the idea, but then she added: "If we can do that for the tools we created, why shouldn't we provide that service for our fellow toolmakers as well? Wouldn't it be nice if we could enable them to make a living based on services around their tools too?"

"Yes - this would be really nice", he answered. "So maybe it's just not enough to INSPIRE people to share and finally this would