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Having read the abstract of "Open-Source Software: An Economic Assessment", I have to take the authors to task on some of their initial assumptions, such as:<BR>
<B>"...the main purpose of making the source code freely available is to prevent a price-controlled market from evolving in the first place."</B> - I can think of many reasons why source code is made freely available but this is surely not the main reason.<BR>
<BR>
<B>"Their motivation stems from an individual interest in solving a problem, the technological challenge or the hope of establishing a reputation. However, software supply should be determined by users' actual wants."</B> - This seems to mean that the authors are in favour of a Soviet style demand economy. If ever there was an industry that has shown how supply can stimulate demand it must surely be the software industry! <BR>
<BR>
<B>"The open-source model is poorly suited to be the only alternative form of software development."</B> - An obvious straw man. I know that a few OSS advocates would like to see OSS as the only form of software development but the majority accept the diversity of development models in current use. I don't know anyone that advocates a single OSS/commercial software split.<BR>
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<B>"If software is available free of charge, its development does not generate proceeds, income,<BR>
jobs or taxes. This inability to add value cannot be compensated for by using complementary strategies." </B>- Surely it is a mistake to imply that added costs means added value. This is clearly the sales pitch of a software vendor. What they are missing is that there is a huge amount of software developed by organisations, who are not software vendors, for their own needs. These organisations, both commercial and non-commercial, can see the many non-tangible benefits of sharing their code with the wider community. A illustrative example that comes to mind is the waste heat produced by power stations. Pumped straight into rivers and lakes it can be a form of pollution. Electricity generators are happy to 'give away' the heat to market gardeners who use it to heat greenhouses and grow products that would otherwise be uneconomic if they were to pay for the heating. This is exactly the situation that the paper's authors claim does not exist: proceeds, income, jobs and taxes from something 'free'. In the same way organisations, from charities to banks, generate software as a by-product of their normal activities. As by-products are not the principal economic activity of the organisations that produce them, the concept of added-value is not relevant. This is precisely why software vendors 'don't get' OSS. Their principal economic activity is selling software licences. If there were companies that existed to make profits from the sale of hot water, they would be just as pissed off at electricity companies 'giving away' their excess heat in the form of hot water!<BR>
<BR>
Mark.<BR>
<BR>
On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 05:38, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
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<PRE><FONT COLOR="#ff7373"><I>Just noticed 2 recent "academic" papers at</FONT>
<A HREF="http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/index.htm"><U>http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/index.htm</U></A>
<FONT COLOR="#ff7373">
Open-Source Software: An Economic Assessment
Open Source-Software: Eine volkswirtschaftliche Bewertung
The Impact of Microsoft Deutschland GmbH on the German IT Sector
Die Bedeutung der Microsoft Deutschland GmbH für den deutschen IT-Sektor
Their conclusion in short: Microsoft good, Free Software Bad.
Does anyone know something about the authors?
w.</PRE>
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