Social Science Research Council

Steven Weber, project leader

The negotiation between global and local economic norms is central to questions of economic development. This is squarely addressed by Steven Weber’s project on open source movements. Weber moves beyond the more basic point about conflicting norms across the global North and South to point out that conflict is emerging within the North itself, especially as property rights are increasingly embodied in forms of information (e.g., software and genetic code) rather than the more longstanding physical and biological forms (e.g., machines and microbes). This conflict between older (physical and biological) forms of property rights and newer (informational) forms is hardly irrelevant to developing countries, as recent controversies over genetic patenting of plants in south Asia make clear. The point is that–as such transformations unfold–a new far more complex set of conflicts are in the offing that cut across and within the developed and developing worlds.

The open source approach to production represents a distinct opportunity for entrepreneurs and experts in developing countries to become directly engaged in leading edge software development. Open source* means that such engagement can occur without the typical structures of restriction, copyright, and patent that have historically encumbered dynamic and creative economic growth. Also, innovators in the South can adapt software developments to meet the specific needs of their own social and economic contexts. The stakes for GDP and prosperity should not be underestimated. IT enjoys a double economic effect: a) directly stimulating economic growth via IT-based goods and services and b) indirectly fostering economic transformation–via organizational and production process innovations based on communications and data processing–in other non-IT sectors such as autos and transportation.

Steve Weber’s project opens the way toward understanding a whole new model of cooperation and innovation (open source), with implications for the very norms (such as property rights) and logics of governance (open as opposed to closed) that undergird current and future international regimes.

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*The “Open Source Definition” as reported by Weber is essentially that: “Source Code must be distributed with the software or otherwise made available for no more than the cost of distribution; anyone may redistribute the software for free, without royalties or licensing fees to the author. Anyone may modify the software or derive other software from it, and then distribute the modified software under the same terms.” Open Source and the Political Economy of Cooperation in the Information Revolution.