As long as computers do as they are named, that is they compute....then there really hasn't been anything new since the abacus. There has only been a slow but increasingly fast evolution in the means and ways of computing from simply adding and subtracting to using numbers to power equipment, to manufacture, to communicate, to publish, etc. As far as Linux and Open Source being glorified copiers, perhaps....but in order to be journalistically honest then Weber would have to admit that the multi-billion dollar firms Microsoft and Apple became that way by first copying Xerox Parc (Apple) and then Microsoft copying Apple. And every piece of software ever written is just a glorified way of shuffling binary code, ie numbers....thus my point about the abacus. The real innovation which continues apace in the Linux/OpenSource world is how a worldwide community in some cases, a very small team in other cases, or an individual, can write software that is "good enough", as good as, or even better than the bloated buggy commercial stuff being sold for hundreds to thousands of dollars. And promoting freedom as well.

Now that's innovation.

It would be interesting to consider science from the same viewpoint, as the Free and Open Source Software communities refer back to the scientific method as inspiration, repeatedly. I seem to remember that as the cost of doing basic science grows higher, more scientists climb into the collaboration framework - consider the really big radio telescopes, etc. Has scientific discovery ceased now that the basis of the scientific method, broadly-based peer review, become a widely accepted part of the commercial software marketplace? Come on, let's take the title of The Economist as a pointer, shall we? Does peer review impact mostly on the development of economic theory? Or on economists' wallets?

>> Economist article ends with a
>> quote not from Linus Torvalds,
>> Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond,
>> Bruce Perens, or anyone of that
>> ilk

Raymond has become the spokesperson for the OSI (Open Source Initiative) and is now its president. The problem is that many of his arguments don't even stand up within the Open Source Community, let alone in the software world at large.

While Open Source has been effective in creating a compelling OS as an academic endeavor, now that Open Source has gone "commercial", the arguments no longer hold water.

Even within the Open Source community many people are refusing to release their source code. This concept of development worked fine while students and enthusiasts were working collaboratively on the Linux OS, but it will be interesting to see how this holds up as the community goes out and attempts to make money on their works.

Open Source development only seems to work as long as those contributing don't intent to commercialize their offerings.

I bought Weber's book The Success of Open Source out of curiosity, but it turned out to be an eye opener. The author analyses the topic from social science perspective and did a great job of doing that. He puts the success of open source on an analytical framework and tries to extrapolate its meaning beyond computer programming. I loved reading it and highly reccomend it.

The Economist is a strange beast. It has a unique writing style, born of the motto "simplify, then exaggerate"