Open source economy

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Open source#Economics. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2013.

Open-source economics is an economic platform based on open collaboration for the production of software, services, or other products.

First applied to the open-source software industry,[1] this economic model may be applied to a wide range of enterprises.

Some characteristics of open-source economics may include: work or investment is carried out without express expectation of return; products or services are produced through collaboration between users and developers; there is no direct individual ownership of the enterprise itself.

In the context of open source hardware design, digital designs are shared for free and then anyone with access to digital manufacturing technologies (e.g. RepRap 3-D printers) can replicate the product for the cost of materials. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the original design from the peer production community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing creates enormous value.[2]

As of recently there were no known commercial organizations outside of software that employ open-source economics as a structural base.[3] Today there are organizations that provide services and products, or at least instructions for building such services or products, that use an open-source economic model.[4][5]

The structure of open source is based on user participation. "networked environment makes possible a new modality of organizing production: radically decentralized, collaborative, and non-proprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial commands."[6]

Read more...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_economics