[kbenson]

Yes, in a way open source acts as a vibrant market of competitors forcing proprietary products to innovate where they may have been willing to stagnate, and in a way immune to some of the more anti-capitalistic ways of preventing innovation (e.g. buying out the main competitors). As unions worked to combat some of the major criticisms of capitalism by Marx (as I understand it), open source works to combat some of the major criticisms of companies in the software market (patents are put in an interesting light in this theory).

[chris_wot]

It's funny, I really feel until open source became widely known as a viable thing that patent reform was dead and non-existent. Not only that, but things like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act passed just before the start of the true mainstreaming of open source culture, but wouldn't fly now.