The open source production process is fascinating in many respects: it produces high quality code outside the boundaries of the hierarchical organization, it defies the rules of many traditional software production models and it has many profound implications on social, political, and economic systems of the Internet era.
I will discuss prior research work on the topic. For example, should open source serve as an example of how to develop systems of participation with the aim to transform our current systems as Benkler suggests? Can the open source community development process be better understood by researching the architecture of software such as Git? Is open source a revolutionary movement transforming our prevailing social, economic and political systems as Weber suggests? What are the drawbacks of these perceptions? Finally, we will discuss some open questions.