Linked by David Adams on Mon 16th Aug 2004 17:44 UTC
I read something in one of the comments for an OSNews posting a couple weeks ago that sent me thinking. It wasn't an original or profound thought. In fact, it's a rather commonly-held opinion that happens to be quite misguided. It's an opinion summed up by the "open source = communist" meme that gets thrown around in thousands of flamewars all over the internet. In this essay, I will explore why this idea is wrong and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.
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Eventhough the author tries to show both sides of the coin, he unfortunately misses the 'metal' itself. The programmers that actually produce the OSS apps.
No one denies the benefits of using OSS. However, for one to get something for free, usually another has to give something for free. And that's where the current OSS equation breaks. OSS developers are percieved (and actually are) by the current economy as free labor. From the devs point of view, some of their labor goes for idealism, for the community for and the advancement of technology/knowledge in general. That's a good thing, but it's not something they can go to the grocery with.
For the equation to hold firm, the beneficiaries need to give something back. And that usually doesn't happen. Everyone enjoy using software for free, but when talks about contributing/paying back arise, then all the excuses in the world are being used. For the equation to hold, people should have a MORAL. And as far as i can tell, most of them (us?) don't. And that's very unfortunate. It just won't hold, and i say it with much grief.
For example, I've been leading more than one OSS project (all VERY successfull, albeit small in scope) with hundreds of thousands of users. On some i had donations links. Let me tell you something. I got $NULL, zero, zilch, nothing. Not even a single $. and I desperately needed some, as i was unemployed for more than a year (I do have a proper job now though, pretty demanding, but nevertheless a good one).
That's why i don't think it can hold for long. Eventhough i (and many more) will continue to write OSS applications for the reasons stated above, the occupation of programming is going to loose it's attractiveness (which is from the financial point of view usually), less programmers will walk the earth, hence, less OSS apps will be written, and software companies will rule the earth again. It would be interesting to see how this overshoot effect will develop.
But one thing i can say: The current equation can't hold, as it's a terribly unbalanced one.