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Joel On The Economics of Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the why-it-works-the-way-it-does dept.

Stephen writes "The ever-incisive Joel Spolsky discusses the economics of open source software in his latest Joel on Software column. Why do so many large companies want to develop open source software? It's not because they have suddenly converted to Stallmanism."

4 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good article, but browsers complement servers? by jshowlett · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Simple. With no web browsers out there, there wouldn't be much demand for web servers, would there? In this case the strategy is not to grab market share from the competition but, in the words of Dubya, to "make the pie higher!"

  2. Quite good, but... by 00_NOP · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of good points, but the Cathedral/Bazaar point is still a good one.

    The argument here seems to be people make free-as-in-beer software because its cheap. But they may also do it because it produces better software (therefore reducing the TOC for the other products).

    These two things are not necessarily in conflict.

    Frankly, I also think that a number of arguments used are pure Aunt Sallys. Has anyone ever really said IBM have converted to communism? If so, which mental institution were they speaking from at the time?

  3. Inch time foot gem by jcsehak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's this zen koan:

    A lord asked Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others. Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:

    Not twice this day
    Inch time foot gem.

    The day in which you coded that software you gave away for free will not come again. A small bit of your time is more valuable than the largest diamond. It's limited and you can never buy more. Never put a price on your time. It cheapens it.

    (BTW, if anyone knows exactly which characters Takuan wrote down, I'd be eternally grateful if you told/showed me, email is jcsehak.at.yahoo.com)

    --

    c-hack.com |
  4. Software as a commodity by javilon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I most like of this theory is that hardware is a commodity today. If open source can turn software into a commodity, the real value will be in the people putting systems together (as the IBM example shows).

    Most of the slashdot crowd are technical heads so I would say that it is in the best interest of most of us to get GPL'd stuff working, with the possible exception of packaged closed software developers, about 5% of all developers.

    This way the money will go to us, instead of CEOs or marketing departments.

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."