Open-source economics is an economic platform based on open collaboration for the production of software, services, or other products.
First applied to the open-source software industry, this economic model may be applied to a wide range of enterprises.
Some characteristics of open-source economics may include: work or investment is carried out without express expectation of return; products or services are produced through collaboration between users and developers; there is no direct individual ownership of the enterprise itself.
As of recently there were no known commercial organizations outside of software that employ open-source economics as a structural base. Today there are organizations that provide services and products, or at least instructions for building such services or products, that use an open-source economic model.
The structure of open source is based on user participation. "networked environment makes possible a new modality of organizing production: radically decentralized, collaborative, and non-proprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market signals or managerial commands."