Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm
Source: Dev.to
Why open source hints at how people will build together online
Think of software as a crowd of people fixing and making things, often without pay, and you get a glimpse of a bigger change. This shows how people can join, each doing small parts, and together make something large.
When work can be split into tiny tasks, and pieces are easy to put back together, many more will pitch in, even strangers who have never met. In networks, it’s easier to find the right person for a job, so skills get used better than in old company setups.
As tools and links get cheaper, the gap grows between joint projects and big firms, because collaboration can tap many hands and many ideas. The limit is not money; it’s how easy the work can be split and stitched, and how cheap it is to weave it back together.
This way of making things lets a lot of people share effort, and sometimes produces better results faster. It feels like a new kind of teamwork for a connected world, where scale matters, and small contributions become big wins.