Can Open Source Save the World?

Since Richard Stallman, his Free Software Foundation’s vision of a wholly free operating system and the harmonious marriage between the FSF’s work and Torvalds’ Linux kernel development a new production paradigm has emerged. From GNU/Linux transpired the foundations of the open source movement ever present in modern society. Free(dom) software development and the open source ideology of the ability to freely improve upon an existing product and redistribute it for a larger benefit is transforming the way we use and interact with software, information resources and the web.

Through the use of open source methodologies, free(dom) software and with very little effort, knowledge or capital input individuals can now collaboratively produce products and reach markets that only large companies and corporations could previously. Thus it is providing a step up for small time producers and individuals to compete with well established businesses but at the same time threatens the traditional market based economy. Organisations such as YouTube and MySpace are founding a new form of business that circumvents the attack on the economy and utilises the urge to mass collaborate. Termed Wikinomics, this new business model creates an added value to their services and has proved to be extremely lucrative for their founders. Traditional business models face the threat of becoming outdated and obsolete when trying to compete with the new age of collaboration with un-savvy businesses facing an uncertain future in the emerging networked economy.

This thesis will strive to outline the problem that open source inadvertently poses on the economy. It has the potential to facilitate an economic meltdown giving way to an entirely free world where organisations would find it impossible to compete. However a select few are pioneering in an emerging networked economy by utilising open source methodologies, producing better end user driven content, goods and services as a result. Others must take heed in order to save the modern global economy from falling at the first hurdle.

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