The open source invasion has been spawned from a philosophy based on sharing. This open philosophy stems from the history of developer cooperation and open network communications through open standards. The Internet brought us open communications through the open TCP/IP standard. The open source philosophy and unique licensing agreement allow for the communal development of software. Developers of the software can now work together over the Internet, retrieve open source software, update the software and share it with others. This open philosophy embraces the good that can be done through social collaboration as it translates to software development. The social benefits of the open source philosophy are similar to the benefits to society from the open standards on the Internet.

Open source software is free of some of the encumbrances of using proprietary software. This invasion will give consumers more freedom than just more choices in software. When users embrace any open source software it places the responsibility for the software in the hands of a public entity instead of a private one. A group of fellow users represents the user's interest instead of a private entity that might have other objectives. This may be important to the consuming user especially with operating system software. By embracing an open source operating system it takes away the control of the market by one or two dominate private entities. There are many practical ramifications to giving the control of the computer operating system market back to the computer users.