The Airplane as an Open-Source Invention

Airplanes were invented after decades of experimentation in many countries through a process we can call open-source innovation. Experimenters, inventors, and writers contributed to the airplane?s development by sharing information in publications, in clubs, by writing letters and by visiting. The hundreds of aeronautical patents before 1900 were treated like publications, not like claims to intellectual property. Inventors of modern airplanes copied earlier designs, analogously to advances in open-source software today. In 1908 airplanes were seen to fly in public exhibitions, and a new industry of airplane manufacturers started quickly in several countries based largely on public non-proprietary information. With the appearance of industrial airplane manufacturing, patents assumed a new importance in the context of commercial competition.