Produção colaborativa = código aberto?

Artigo no The Guardian fala sobre a expansão do paradigma "open source" (código aberto) para outras esferas de produção colaborativa, além do software. Seguem trechos:

"Open source ideas are breaching the boundary between software and electronics. At IBM, the next generation of computer chips is being designed using the same open methods that have revolutionised software. Claims are even being made that anything from marketing techniques to drugs, beer to washing-up liquid, can in some ways be described as open source.
(...)According to the Demos pamphlet, a number of "virtual pharmaceutical companies" already operate in ways analogous to those of the open source community. These companies are rethinking the traditional method of guarding in-house discoveries and sharing the development of their products with rivals in order to get drugs to market in super-quick time. Such openness would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

In the old textile town of Huddersfield, the wider application of open source is taking root. At the town's media centre, a small team of designers is developing TileToy, an interactive, electronically powered toy building brick. The team regularly publishes details of the product's development (through a blog) and invites others to help with and share ideas. According to Tom Holley, the centre's creative director, the way in which the inventors are "opening" the development to a wider community represents an extension of the open source ethic. "The principle is to create a model of product development that changes the relationship between manufacturer and user," he says. "It allows smaller teams to function that wouldn't normally be able to afford a full commercial development cycle."

The question is: can these ideas be used to create something more profound than an educational toy? Or, as Holley suggests: "Can we create an open source dialysis machine or designs for a water desalination plant?" Or, as the authors of Wide Open suggest, could such a sharing of knowledge lead to cheaper crops or result in more affordable cures for disease? Holley thinks so, and that by adopting open source thinking, it could challenge the "current dominance of multinational corporations".

Tags: opensource