How does open-source innovation economics work and how would you extrapolate the trend if society transitions to a robot/AI automated knowledge based economy?

In the software world, we hear concepts like "paying it forward", which sound like like prizes and subsidies but, we also hear about giving back financially or through knowledge contribution on GitHub or Wikipedia.

When the inventor shares freely and is sometimes able to gain back from others' work on top of their own work. Maybe it's like a pyramid scheme of ideas, but ideas don't seem to run out like regular pyramids.