The Success of Open Source

Extract

The Success of Open Source, Steven Weber, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. viii, 312.

The phenomenon of open source software produced by distributed networks of largely volunteer computer programmers has been studied by legal scholars, economists, sociologists, anthropologists and computer scientists but has to date not drawn significant attention from political scientists. Steven Weber's book undertakes a political economic analysis of this topic. Weber attempts to address the questions of what incentives establish and sustain co-operation in the absence of direct monetary rewards and how a system of governance develops despite the lack of conventional exclusionary property rights.