popular Open Source tools and applications developed through collaboration among their respective communities of innovation (such as software like Linux, Apache Web Server, PostgresSQL and PHP) were compared with similar proprietary software, Gartner found that open source bested or equaled the quality of their proprietary cousins and that many open source developers and advocates are gainfully employed and at very little risk of losing future work prospects. Open source products development has proven to be an efficient way of exhibiting skills. According to the Technology and Innovation Management Review, open innovation generally provides the following benefits: Broader base of ideas, Technological synergy, Improvement of the internal learning capacity through the transfer of external knowledge and learning routines and Use of intellectual property as strategic assets. However, open innovation is also associated with a slow or delayed development Pace. Also, over time it has been proven especially in the case of communities of innovation in the software industry that due to the nature of patent and intellectual property law, the dream of open source software as advanced by its advocates has failed. It was believed that democratization of software would result in shared ownership of its intellectual property, but that hasn't happened. Software built using open source software is then patented and closed to external collaboration by wealthy companies, who profit much more from the results than the communities of innovation involved in developing the underlying technologies. This leads to greater wealth inequality, as opposed to social good. According to an article in Technology and Innovation Management Review, open innovation generally suffers from the following disadvantages: strong dependence on external knowledge; loss of key knowledge control; loss of flexibility, creativity, and strategic power. History There is evidence that, contrary to the popular belief, communities of innovation such as those in open source software, are not a recent development. There are many examples in history in which innovators have used collective invention as in the cases of textile machinery, steam engines, and the production of iron and steel. In these cases, the innovators' behavior was largely dependent on public policy that accommodated knowledge sharing to foster cumulative innovation. Sometimes, knowledge sharing coexisted with patenting. Despite the historical precedent, today knowledge sharing among innovators is generally regarded as a modern development. The cost for information exchange has drastically decreased due, in a large part, to breakthroughs within the information and communication fields. According