Collaborative Competition: The Open Source Solution (Report) (Company Overview‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Development in the early years of the computer industry was dominated by the Hacker Ethic, which stated that "access to computers--and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works--should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!" (Levy, 2001, p. 40). This belief in freedom of information was the nearly universal mantra of many computer software engineers during the early years of the computer industry. A massive shift has been underway in the ideology of intellectual property as it relates to the computer software industry. Software patents and copyrights stifle innovation by increasing the costs of research and development and by forcing companies to spend money obtaining and defending patents. Reform is needed to correct these problems, but current proposals do not increase the efficiency of development enough to positively impact consumers. A proposal based on the open source software system is discussed as the best possible alternative to current proposals.