Yochai Benkler’s and Helen Nissenbaum’s “Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue” discussed the vital essence about open sources. “Facilitated by the technical infrastructure of the Internet, the hallmark of this socio-technical system is collaboration among large groups of individuals, sometimes in the order of tens or even hundreds of thousands, who cooperate effectively to provide information, knowledge or cultural goods without relying on either market pricing or managerial hierarchies to coordinate their common enterprise. Open source software source codes are made freely available for redistribution or modification. People or group of people with common idea contributes and share ideas towards that agenda. One of the perfect example of open source is the Wikipedia. “Wikipedia is a free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles” (google).
“The Political Economy of Open Source Software” by Steven Weber also defined open source in three essential features; it “allows free re-distribution of the software without royalties or licensing fees to the author. It requires that source code be distributed with the software or otherwise made available for no more than the cost of distribution. It allows anyone to modify the software or derive other software from it, and to redistribute the modified software under the same terms”. Open source allows anyone to modified or edit something. It is not like Microsoft that strictly protects its coding and as well backed by copy right protection.
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Open Source allows for redistribution of that product like software. Limited closed source media like Microsoft do not allow the product to be manipulated.