The Open Code Market

There's a new article in First Monday entitled "The Open Code Market". Jordi Carrasco-Munoz, the author has some interesting comments about the article itself, which I've put below, but the overall direction of the piece is, in his words: "In short, The Open Code Market aims to become a Free Market for software, as well as a market for Free Software. The OCM introduces into the Free/Open Source movement an economic incentive, to help align the priorities of Free/Open Source developers with those of the end users. " Jordi writes: "

The Open Code Market

The peer reviewed magazine FirstMonday has published one paper I wrote on the business possibilities of Open Source titled "The Open Code Market".

In short, The Open Code Market aims to become a Free Market for software, as well as a market for Free Software. The OCM introduces into the Free/Open Source movement an economic incentive, to help align the priorities of Free/Open Source developers with those of the end users.

Between the final draft and publication, I received many valuable comments on the idea. I am very grateful to all those who dedicated some of their valuable time to read the paper and make insightful comments.

Some of those comments led me to an earlier similar effort by Brian Behlendorf named SourceXchange (originally at www.sourcexchange.com). After contacting Brian, his comments were probably the most valuable, since he had gone through the the actual proces of running a project similar to what I am proposing.

His main line was that:
a) while the market made profits, it did not reach the levels of profitability that were expected in the middle of the dot.com boom, and investors looked for other (more lucrative) endevours
b) That the dot.com boom also addedd costs (high salaries, etc) to his attempt and
c) that it is difficult to commoditise software creation due to the uncertainties over time / effort required to write the software, and the difficulty of the role of "project manager".

My line on all this is that
- The project may be easier to develop now as expectations for profits (and costs) have decreased, and that sourcing on low-cost countries (i.e. India, Vietnam, etc.) would reduce costs significantly.
- I also expect that the market will take off only as Free Software/Open Source (Linux in particular) moves to the mass market of the desktop, thus generating the necessary economies of scale, visibility and consumer-mass. In my idea, the target end-users of the market are not IT companies, but mainly individuals with no IT knowled (nor desire to acquire it) and Small and Medium Enterprises with small or no IT departments. "

Comments

Something like Expert's Exchange?

[G4from128k]

It sounds like you are proposing something akin to Experts-Exchange, but with a few differences. OCM would use real dollars, instead of points. OCM would also encourage the creation and reuse of code, not just answers to IT questions. OCM might incorporate private collaborative project spaces to help a shifting group of workers create commissioned code.

SourceXchange reborn

[mpieters]

Mark Pratt of Beehive, Germany, has relaunched the SourceXchange idea:

Open SourceXperts.com

Complete with the lame eX. It only launched on 10 November, so be gentle with yor 'how quiet here' comments.

TopCoder Software is already doing this

[srowen]

TopCoder Software has being doing what this article describes for over a year:

http://software.topcoder.com/

In short they are trying to put a structured, process-oriented community development model into a design / development competition format (with cash incentives, both upfront and as royalties) for creating new software. The resulting work is marketed as a component library, and the community itself is marketed as a "no-shore" development resource.

Check it out, it is a pretty good system -- the results are surprisingly good. I regularly participate in these projects.

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

1 software liability is usually not worth the paper the contract is written on

2 the main reason why developers moved away from the public domain to OSS licenses is that you can only use the software if you accept you cannot sue the developer

3 buyer beware - with open source, you have the right to view (the source) before buying (using)

4 liability is expensive. if you want to be able to sue, buy your OSS software from someone who's willing to offer you liability. it's like that this is an insurable risk (at least for software who source can be audited)

Re:DIY'ers: OCM supports Plain Old Users

[Laur]

This is the big problem with current Open Source world, IMO -- the current Open Source world seems oriented toward DIY'ers creating code for other DIY'ers. Its a BOF community of computer and software-loving people. The result is code that only another coder would love. What fraction of Open Source software packages "just works" without configuration, reading a manual, etc.

I'm not sure about the overall fraction of open source, but I think that the majority of the most "popular and common" open source apps "just work." Here's some examples from my personal experience based upon what I use.

Everyday apps:

KDE - just works. Plenty of tweaking can be accomplished by right clicking or through the control center.

Mozilla - just works.

Evolution - just works.

OpenOffice.org - just works.