Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Working Knowledge
Business Research for Business Leaders
  • Browse All Articles
  • Popular Articles
  • Cold Call Podcast
  • Managing the Future of Work Podcast
  • About Us
  • Book
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Entrepreneurship
  • All Topics...
  • Topics
    • COVID-19
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Finance
    • Gender
    • Globalization
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Negotiation
    • Social Enterprise
    • Strategy
  • Sections
    • Book
    • Podcasts
    • HBS Case
    • In Practice
    • Lessons from the Classroom
    • Op-Ed
    • Research & Ideas
    • Research Event
    • Sharpening Your Skills
    • What Do You Think?
    • Working Paper Summaries
  • Browse All
    • Archive

    The Success of Open Source

     
    Why open source is successful—and what that means for business, politics, and society.
    9/13/2004

    This ambitious look at the open source phenomenon does so not from a technological view but a sociopolitical one. The author, a political scientist, explores why open source works and what those lessons mean on a broader scale. Can the open source model, which relies on non-paid labor, be used to accomplish great works of public good? What are its implications for economic growth and development? After all, Weber says, open source is not software—it's a way of organizing production to make things jointly.

    Weber sets out to answer three fundamental questions at the heart of the success of open source: Why do software developers devote time and effort to open source projects without compensation? How and why are open source projects coordinated? And finally, how does the open source community get around "Brooks's Law," which says that adding programmers to a job increases the time to complete it?

    He also ponders how the notion of property is radically transformed in an open source universe. "Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude," he says. Can a working economic system be built around a core notion of property rights as distribution?

    With answers in hand, Weber ponders the future. Because the software is available for free to anyone who wants it, open source has the power to, if not eliminate, at least shrink the digital divide among nations, he says, by providing poor countries with the computing resources needed to participate on the world economic stage. Weber also foresees that open source's reliance on reusable code means that innovation can happen more swiftly and cheaply, perhaps even bringing the power of supercomputing to the individual. On an organizational level, companies will become more creative about attacking problems by "open sourcing" a solution to scattered teams or individuals.

    ǁ
    Campus Map
    Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
    Baker Library | Bloomberg Center
    Soldiers Field
    Boston, MA 02163
    Email: Editor-in-Chief
    →Map & Directions
    →More Contact Information
    • Make a Gift
    • Site Map
    • Jobs
    • Harvard University
    • Trademarks
    • Policies
    • Accessibility
    • Digital Accessibility
    Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College