The open source movement has been popularised by the geeks, who benefited immensely from the collaborative power of the internet. The notion of open source has been around for centuries albeit in small communities where knowledge sharing was a way of life. The concept of bartering and peer production was given shape in the late 19th century. And in 2003, collaborative projects like Wikipedia emerged and have proven to be quite successful.
Yochai Benkler points out in his TED talk, that "social production" is the long term disprutive force that will challenge the players in the commercial market place. Benkler's book "The Wealth of Networks" is made available as a source for open discussion using Yale's annotation platform.
So as the Internet continues its growth, the notion of an open source is moving to other domains. Like the Open Architecture Network that provides solutions to a wider audience. Peer production is here to stay... and a key question is to figure how commercial players and the public sector would respond to this disruption.
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