This is a quick reply but everyone has their own take on open source. The first half open source I remember was the IBM crash program to develop
an open architecture for the IBM PC. Small hobbyists and inventors were starting in personal computer manufacture while the old blue chip
mainframe computer companies watched and decided they had to do something fast or lose out on part of the computer and software market.
Open source worked out well for the large companies but did much to ruin the shareware market of small independent programmers. It in some
ways reminds me of unpaid internships. For example Red hat and Cisco did well and even MSNBC eventually ran code developed by open source and with publicly funded institutions such as MIT who had student groups make larger scale software projects as prototypes and even sometimes used the free code straight away. Not so good for the small independent developer but open source software mostly morphed in to a platform for simple apps to base a start ups on and lower cost development for majors to choose parts where they saw fit. This time open source has helped in my effort. The fact remains some have the view of free energy but the cost of hardware and time is not a gift for the struggling. The driving force is not entirely greed for some of those in the new clean energy technology arena but it is still prevalent for others and more so in the formal system. The point is you can not get much worth while done from any perspective for the world in a reasonable time without physical action and resources to support that effort without monetary capital and some have and some do not. I hoped for other options but some things are too important to be left to the chance of hoping for the right place the right quarter for support when that happening is rare and more based on luck than ability or insight. I could say overall capabilities for to make a goal or activity possible for more individuals is improved in general by open source.