Economist's Take On Open Source Development

An anonymous reader writes "Economist Dean Baker outlines alternative funding mechanisms for software development in a new report called "Opening Doors and Smashing Windows" [PDF Warning], available at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. One proposal is to create a US government-funded Software Development Corps of public software corporations, which compete and produce only free and open source software. Baker estimates that through the resulting lower prices in software and computers, the government would recoup its annual $2 billion appropriation to the program and US consumers would save $80-120 billion each year -- all while 20,000 software developers are supported to work specifically on open source projects."

Comments

Re:um, what?

[porcupine8]

How does it take any money out of the economy? That $80-120 billion would be spent on cars, or vacations, or houses, or dining out, or *something*. Or invested at least. The only way it would be taken out of the economy is if people said "I'm going to put the $300 I saved on this piece of software under my mattress for safekeeping."

And if it created 20,000 more jobs, then that would be 20,000 more people with the ability to spend more money...

(Note: I'm not saying I support or don't support this idea. Just that your argument is flawed.>