by Steven Weber

Open source software is an unusual phenomenon.  Most interestingly, it turns property rights traditions upside-down through “copyleft” licenses such as the General Public License (GPL).  Such licenses allow afford full distribution and commercial use rights with three stipulations:  1) licensed code can only be distributed under the same license, 2) licensed code must, if distributed as binaries, be accompanied with the source code, and 3) any modified or linked code that is redistributed is also released under the same license.

These stipulations establish an intellectual property commons of similarly-licensed work that can be used by the public at large and are diametrically opposed to the more prevalent ownership-as-exclusion.  Since this book has been written, many other knowledge products have been developed using similar commons-oriented licensing regimes, including Wikipedia.  Creative Commons was established by Lawrence Lessig to promote a digital information commons.

The Success of Open Source examines these developments through the lense of open source software but extends the social implications far beyond this limited scope.  The author sees open source as the first new model of production since Henry Ford.  In the final chapter he examines potential future applications to this model of production and societal implications.