Open Source Corp.

Precedents: Mozilla, Wikipedia, Eclipse, Office.org, Youtube, Linux OS, itune, iphone applicatoins, etc...

Open-source fosters development of non-commercial business model which rely on open-source contributions from anonymous individuals (mostly unpaid volunteer/ enthusiasts) that are brought together via the internet and often shared a common vision and ambition to develop a better, efficient software interface than ones traditionally developed by commercial corporate giants such as MS, Adobe, Autodesk, etc. Since the software are open-sourced, this drastically reduces the cost of research and development that is often required under a commercial business model, while lowering the barriers (cost) traditionally required to venture into the industry. Hence open-sourced software is able to compete with commercially developed software by offering them to users at low to free of charge and with no licensing requirements. Thus they could be easily and quickly distributed using the internet via downloads, further reducing the inventory, property, labor, selling and operating costs in general. The profit is generated not from the software but the supplementary products and services that come with increasing use and demands for the software and subsequent advertising opportunities as the result of their increasing exposures.

Apple allows customers to design their own iphone application and sell it on itune. All customers need to do is purchase a package containing the programming language, the how-to, and license agreements that grants you permission to sell your apps on itune.

How could a non-commercial (open-source) model benefit design operation? is open source design or architecture possible? at what stage of design process should open-source happen? is individual authorship still relevant?