Key Arguments in favour of Open Source

• Moral/Altruistic: Information is free (or should be). ==> Give it away [FSF, Richard Stallman]
• Economic: The software is free (couldn't get cheaper than that!). It runs on low-cost, commodity hardware.
• Developmental/Technical: Code Quality and Productivity improves dramatically under the gaze of thousands of eyeballs ("more users find more bugs"; more users have more ideas) [E S Raymond]
• Political/Libertarian: People should be free to change their sofware to do whatever they wish it to do (e.g., you can change your car into a pickup if you desire) ==> Open up the source [FSF, EFF, OSF].
• Motivational: Programmers will gravitate towards solving problems (building programs) that they most enjoy working on and for which they have the most competence
• Operational: Open Software provides flexibility to the user, to change it when and how.

Open Source Resources

• Definition of Open Source
• Open Resources: The Free Source
• Opensource Organization
• Open Source App Foundation
• Freestandards
• Microsoft's Shared Source
• Picking up your marbles: Why Microsoft's Shared Source isn't Open Source 

Open Source Philosophers