Success of Open Source

Much of the innovative programming that powers the Internet, creates operating systems, and produces software is the result of "open source" code, that is, code that is freely distributed--as opposed to being kept secret--by those who write it. Leaving source code open has generated some of the most sophisticated developments in computer technology, including, most notably, Linux and Apache, which pose a significant challenge to Microsoft in the marketplace. As Steven Weber discusses, open source's success in a highly competitive industry has subverted many assumptions about how businesses are run, and how intellectual products are created and protected.Traditionally, intellectual property law has allowed companies to control knowledge and has guarded the rights of the innovator, at the expense of industry-wide cooperation. In turn, engineers of new software code are richly rewarded; but, as Weber shows, in spite of the conventional wisdom that innovation is driven by the promise of individual and corporate wealth, ensuring the free distribution of code among computer programmers can empower a more effective process for building intellectual products. In the case of Open Source, independent programmers--sometimes hundreds or thousands of them--make unpaid contributions to software that develops organically, through trial and error.Weber argues that the success of open source is not a freakish exception to economic principles. The open source community is guided by standards, rules, decisionmaking procedures, and sanctioning mechanisms. Weber explains the political and economic dynamics of this mysterious but important market development.

A valuable new account of the [open-source software] movement., Weber’s ideas are timely and informative for anyone who wants to explain or advocate Open Source… The Success of Open Source…gives a readable, thought-provoking, and occasionally funny account of what Open Source is and means, making it an extremely valuable resource for those who want to engage and discuss these issues on an intellectual level., In the world of open-source software, true believers can be a fervent bunch. Linux, for example, may act as a credo as well as an operating system. But there is much substance beyond zealotry, says Steven Weber, the author of The Success of Open Source… An open-source operating system offers its source code up to be played with, extended, debugged, and otherwise tweaked in an orgy of user collaboration. The author traces the roots of that ethos and process in the early years of computers… He also analyzes the interface between open source and the worlds of business and law, as well as wider issues in the clash between hierarchical structures and networks, a subject with relevance beyond the software industry to the war on terrorism., While much in Weber’s account will be familiar to anyone concerned with this debate, his book should make this extraordinary phenomenon understandable to a much wider audience… [The Success of Open Source] deserve[s] the careful attention of a wide audience, including, especially, governments., Weber sees the central issues raised by [open source software] as property, motivation, organisation and governance. He uses a study of the open source movement to illuminate the motivation of programmers and the way [open source software] projects are co-ordinated and governed, and to ask if there are lessons in it for society… Weber’s work brings to mind an earlier book, The Machine That Changed the World, a study of how Toyota’s production system transformed the way cars are made everywhere. That book made two simple points: that the Toyota ‘system’ was a car, and that it was not uniquely Japanese. Steve Weber’s book can be—and is—similarly summarised: ‘Open source is not a piece of software, and it is not unique to a group of hackers.’ And it has the potential to change the world.

Steven Weber is Professor in the School of Information and Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a global leader in the analysis of issues at the intersection of technology markets, intellectual property, and international politics. His books include The Success of Open Source and, with Bruce W. Jentleson, The End of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas (both from Harvard).