Just read the following article, which indeed is interesting.
I do not completly agree with some conclusion and the article lacks some discussion about how freedom itself is valuable to economics.
However Prasad counter argues accuses which are made against the commercial Free Sofware world, coming from business minded people. He shows that society (including other business-branches) does not have to follow the cries of mercantile software vendors to secure their high profits through copyright from an angle of ecnomic theory.
Therefor we can find some arguments and nice analogies in there to fight common mistakes about an economy of software has to work.
Bernhard
Open Source-onomics: Examining some pseudo-economic arguments about Open Source By Ganesh Prasad sashi@easy.com.au Posted: ( 2001-05-29 06:24:16 EST by )
http://www.freeos.com/articles/4087/
Bernhard, one month ago:
[...] Therefor we can find some arguments and nice analogies in there to fight common mistakes about an economy of software has to work.
It's interesting, but it has a serious problem: it only considers "open source" as charity work. While some is charity, more and more is not. The fact that it can either be charity or paid work is what makes the real difference, in my opinion. I know someone here doesn't agree, though.
/alessandro
On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 02:59:40PM +0200, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
Bernhard, one month ago:
[...] Therefor we can find some arguments and nice analogies in there to fight common mistakes about an economy of software has to work.
It's interesting, but it has a serious problem: it only considers "open source" as charity work.
The author uses the suboptimal term for Free Software, but I consider this a minor problem.
His aim of the article is: Free Software makes sense even if when there will not be a business model for it.
This is no statement about whether there is such a business model. He does not answer yes or no only that no widely recognised one has been found so far.
Consider the following quotes it makes a lot of sense to envision that there is a business model for sure:
" Is it possible to make money off Open Source? In the light of all that we have discussed, this now seems a rather petty and inconsequential question to ask. [..] There is great wealth that will be created [..] and very little of that will have anything to do with money. [..] this increase in the overall size of the economic pie results in proportionately more wealth for all, then that's the grand answer to our petty question "
While some is charity, more and more is not. The fact that it can either be charity or paid work is what makes the real difference, in my opinion.
There is also a difference between charity and getting other rewards. The former is altruistic the latter not. He also talks about the latter.
Bernhard
There is also a difference between charity and getting other rewards. The former is altruistic the latter not. He also talks about the latter.
Yes, that true. In this line I recently read two papers of Eric von Hippel (et. al). They are very interesting, but I don't know if they are online (a local teacher gave them to me). He's an economist at MIT and he studies user-innovation phenomena, including Free Software (and he's well informed in introducing and describing freesoftware/opensource).
There are other papers on the same general topic under http://www.mit.edu/people/evhippel/ , but I didn't yet look at them. It looks like his arguments can be used against software patents as well (he covers the net advantage for both the innovator and society at large in releasing innovative ideas to the marketplace without using the classic forms of "protection").
von Hippel's articles are much more heavy than yours, though.
/alessandro