Each student has the opportunity, and freedom, to look at the source code, learn from it, and change it. Because transparency encourages and cultivates the free exchange of information, it parallels the ideal learning environment, encouraging investigation, discussion, and ultimately, innovation. This produces agile students who are ready to embrace innovation.
Scientific research is another field that can benefit from transparency.
Transparency creates a closer relationship between the way that research is done and the tools that are used to do it. The scientific community has historically supported a method by which hypotheses are tested, and then reproduced or refuted by others, which then lead to improvements, innovations, or dismissal. Scientific progress depends on knowledge being shared. It works best in an environment where sooner or later all knowledge becomes available to the innovators of the next generation. Progress depends on the freedom of our society's citizens to innovate by standing on the shoulders of the giants who went before us, just as they stood on the shoulders of those before them.