Open source promotes a collaborative culture as it is a type of coding that allows anybody to modify, enhance or to edit for any purposes. Open source brings about debates and discussions on copyright and challenged the entrenched status quo (the proprietary model of cultural and technological production) as mentioned by Siva Vaidhyanathan.

All along, copyright has been given to a single individual/business which gives them exclusive rights and certain advantages. This proprietary model restricts sharing of information which could have impeded growth and development in the industry. One example brought up in the article was how giant corporations like AT&T and Digital asserted control over their source code which restricted scientist from developing and customising their softwares. Richard Stallman was one of the individual who had a strong stance against the model and started the Free Software Foundation to promote peer-to-peer interaction and collaboration. This slowly led to the development of LINUX and GNU which allowed cultural production to reach expensive new markets and audiences.

Open-source is here to stay as the world is changing with rising technological advancements and increasingly tech-savy individuals. However, this rising culture will inevitably lead to many copyrights problems. The community needs to have a common consensus that “copyright is not a single right bestowed on a brilliant individual author but is a bundle of rights that a copyright holder may license to ensure the sustainability and progress of open-source.

The proprietary culture brings about commercial and monetary benefits while the open-source culture brings about consumer benefits and the technological industry needs to find a right balance between the two.