Writing programs and more specifically, Writing in the Disciplines (WID) initiatives have begun to embrace the use of and the ideology inherent to, open source software. The Conference on College Composition and Communication has passed a resolution stating that whenever feasible educators and their institutions consider open source applications. Although well-intended, open source ideology often runs counter to a corporate business culture that produces revenue from aggressively protecting intellectual property. Such aggressiveness helps contribute to the perception of a rigid binary between open source and corporate communities. This article challenges WID scholars and instructors to better acknowledge the complexity of corporate discourses and to develop more nuanced stances in regard to open source and intellectual property. The merits of open source are not simply attacked here but instead the article insists that as WID ponders open source that the discourses from the corporate workplace are not ignored. The concern is that the values inherent in the open source community and built into the technologies it produces are the dominant or only influence on how writing instructors approach intellectual property. This article begins with an examination of open source values and their tenuous relationship to intellectual property law. The remainder of the article is an examination of "why" and "where" WID is appropriating open source technologies and its influential development model. Brief recommendations are offered for specific technologies and the article explains how regardless of monetary savings, open source applications enable a more robust critical literacy in the WID classroom.