Open source warfare isn't a model based purely theoretical musings. It was grounded in observations. First, the combination of qualitative evidence gathered in Brave New War and on this blog allowed the creation of a working model for open source warfare that was both explanatory and predictive. Second, the hard and ground breaking work by Bohorquez, Gourley, Dixon, Spagat, and Johnson demonstrated (see Nature: Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency) it empirically and provided a method to model it computationally.
The same process should be used to build a working model for open source economies. A strong indicator that open source economies are emerging is the rapid growth of its software component. Analysis done by Dirk Riehle back in 2008 (while he was at SAP) calculated that open source software has grown and continues to grow exponentially (see attached chart on the growth in the number of non-duplicate lines of source code in open software projects -- click for larger version). This occurred despite host of negative feedback loops that should have slowed or reversed its growth and very few positive feedback loops that impelled it.