Here's an interesting article about open source as a model in other contexts besides software - soft drink formulae, the Wikipedia, etc. I was surpsised to see that blogs weren't mentioned - to me, there's deifnitely a structural similarity between the way these open-source projects operate and the way in which the blogosphere (and here I'm talking specifically about the political side of things, which I know best) aggregates and audits information. You might say that blogs operate with the traditional media as a sort of substratum, but that's arguably true of the Wikipedia too (historical fact?), and even open-source soft drink recipes, which rely on a taste that exists in the cultural conception.
Another place I see the open source concept as relevant is with specifically creative content. The music industry obviously has a closed source problem right now, and distributors are going to fight to the death to keep their role. But even once they're gone (and my assumption is that they'll go - distribution and publicity are increasingly irrelevant), artists who have a strong proprietary streak will have the same problems to deal with. The property rights associated with artistic or otherwise creative work are at the root of the problem here - technology has made it so that laws can't protect them without infringing on the speech rights of the public.
Ultimately, this will resolve itself into a complete deprofessionalization of the arts, and I see the open source culture (not so much the model, although large scale artistic collaboration will probably be a side effect) as a way of turning that effect. Art becomes more public, and creativity acquires a more communitarian outlook. It's not my usual economic take, but economic thinking doesn't exactly explain the current open source phenomenon, either. Could open source be an implicit rejection of capitalism?
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