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I am a member of a few "left" mailing lists, which are typically dominated by Western Orthodox Leftists (typically Marxists) and even tentative mention of open source, by me (an admitted amateur in left theory), is dismissed as irrelevant to left goals, actions, etc. I never quite understood why not. Open source development seems to provide an interesting and successful example of communal effort and production, underpinned by certain ideals (from each according to his abilities and to each according to his need! ;-)) that should warm the heart of leftists.

Not all of the free software / open source movement's principles and functioning is leftist of course. There is a strong libertarian streak running through open source development and certain larger issues (participation within a capitalist system) are poorly addressed. These differences are known within the community, however, and are the subject of ongoing debate. Richard Stallman, the father of what we call today Open Source, goes to great length to stress the political considerations of his movement, and defends his precepts successfully against the newer school (Cathedral/Bazaar types). It seemed strange to me, therefore, that all of this would be so easily dismissed by the entrenched left.

Today, I came across a couple of texts that do seem to take open source a bit more seriously.

One of them is Yochai Benkler's (Yale Law School) book The Wealth of Networks (PDF), the Introduction of which I quote from below:

I haven't read the entire book yet, but it promises to be an interesting read. Another book in a similar vein (which Benkler refers to also) is Steven Weber's The Success of Open Source which funnily enough begins:

Clearly, Weber can speak more intelligently of the matter than I can ;-). In the Preface, he goes on to say:

Now, why couldn't I have put it that way, when arguing for the importance of examining open source! Below is a bit more from the Introduction, followed by a link:

There is an excerpt in PDF from the book available for download from Harvard University Press.