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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In fact, one of the best I've ever read on osnews, as far as I can remember.
Thank you!
@ avih:
I'm sorry about the lack of finacial support. On the other hand, someone may have used one of your projects, decided to contribute, too, and you'll be using his project one day.
Concerning the unbalanced equation: I had a similar thought when I read about an institution saying that Open Source saved the organization lots of dollars, but wasn't willing to provide their existing old but ported Unix application back to the community as Open Source. If I remember correcty, it was a canadian institution about weather forecasting.
However, if one day developers will become a 'scarce' good, prices (and earnings) will rise again, and new people will learn coding. That is meant by the expression 'invisible hand'. On some markets, it actually works.