Economic Crisis Will Eliminate Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "The economic crisis will ultimately eliminate open source projects and the 'Web 2.0 free economy,' says Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. Along with the economic downturn and record job loss, he says, we will see the elimination of projects including Wikipedia, CNN's iReport, and much of the blogosphere. Instead of users offering their services 'for free,' he says, we're about to see a 'sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor' and a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash. Companies that will survive, he says, include Hulu, iTunes, and Mahalo. 'The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue,' says Keen."

Comments

Yeah right.

[Emb3rz]

Advertising + Blogs = continuance of our current model.

Re:Yeah right.

[dotancohen]

Advertising + Blogs = continuance of our current model.

He just doesn't get that some people do things not for the money.

Re:Yeah right.

[mattcasters]

An economic crisis is not the same as a total collapse of society. Developers and community members come and go, live and die and even end up in jail all the time and yet the open source movement continues to thrive.
The article is FUD, a troll. Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Yeah right.

[Peter La Casse]

One of the problems with human beings is that we extrapolate from our own circumstances to make conclusions that we think apply to everyone. "I'm doing great, so lots of people are doing great" is as invalid as "I'm doing poorly, so lots of people are doing poorly". The simple truth is that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

I think we should be able to

[wud]

Can someone please mod this story as flame bait?

Re: I think we should be able to

[JustKidding]

Indeed, why are some people just completely unable to comprehend that not *everyone* is a greedy bastard?

Some people do things, like programming, you know, for fun! Contributing to OSS is not about "back-end revenue" for most people, it's about contributing to a community, about pride, and about intellectual challenges.

I feel sort of sad for him that *his* whole life seems to revolve around money.

Re: I think we should be able to

[MyLongNickName]

And why can't people comprehend that folks write this stuff to sell books and make money? And why can't folks comprehend that Slashdot posts it in order to get page views and make money?

Re: I think we should be able to

[tjstork]

Some people do things, like programming, you know, for fun! Contributing to OSS is not about "back-end revenue" for most people, it's about contributing to a community, about pride, and about intellectual challenges

I think his point is, that, in a recession, and suddenly, programmers aren't working any more with day jobs, that little blog that gets 50000 hits or that little pile of code they've built suddenly looks like it might be something to help , you know, make a mortgage payment with.

I mean, sure, if you are independently wealthy, go ahead and give your time away. But if you've got a family to feed and a house to pay for, you probably might want to have some money coming in.

Re: I think we should be able to

[cowscows]

Your point about OSS is certainly valid, and while I certainly don't think Linux is going to die or anything like that, there will likely be a slow-down in development for certain pieces of software, and specific aspects of the software.

While there are many people who enjoy the fun and challenge of writing software, it's important that not all steps in the process are the same. The adage that the last 10% of the project is 90% of the work is somewhat true, in that making a really well polished product inevitably requires some grind work at the end. In the software world, that might manifest itself as bug squashing, or user testing, or interface tweaking, etc.

It's important work, but it's often time consuming, monotonous, and not fun, and it's hard to get people to volunteer to do it. That's a part of the OSS process that can really benefit by having paid labor to help make sure that it gets the attention it deserves (although there's no doubt that even proprietary companies often skip out on this part).

If the tech economy turns to crap and there are lots of newly unemployed programmers sitting around, I'd actually expect the amount of OSS activity to increase somewhat. All those geeks aren't going to turn off their computers and never code again. But the effort will go towards the sorts of things that are interesting, not towards the dull (but important) drudgery work. If companies stop paying their developers to work on OSS, there are certain types of work that will fall to the wayside.

*laughs*

[RaigetheFury]

This guy is under the assumption everyone who works on open source technology is after financial gain. Very short sighted

Same wrong assumptions, different century

[beldon]

Perhaps it could be said that all the money in FOSS development made developers used to a higher standard of living, but that assumes that getting paid necessarily negates non-monetary rewards. That's a flimsy argument and doesn't bear very close scrutiny. It also assumes traditional scarcity rules have taken over the software industry. If anything, artificial scarcity is even harder to maintain during harder financial times.

This is nothing but a re-hash of Bill Gates' screed against the Homebrew Computer Club about how good software will never be created without paid programmers. It was wrong in then, and it's still wrong.

Suerly the opposite is true

[uchian]

Surely with more people sitting at home, unemployed, with nothing to do other than look for a job, and desperate to make their cv stand out more than everyone else in there situation, the amount of speculative work produced may in fact rise?

yeah right

[ignatus]

"The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some 'back end' revenue," says Keen."

No, the hungry and cold unemployed IT guys will invest their time into open source projects, because it 's a good way to keep their curriculum in shape. And the hungry and cold unemployed will keep using linkedin and facebook to extend their network inorde to find a job. And ofcourse, businesses in difficulties will stop throwing money away for overrated software when they can get a free and open equivalent.

I think a crisis will definately have a positive impact on open source and web 2.0

some choice quotes from Benkler

[griffjon]

"For all of us, there comes a time on any given day, week, and month,every year and in different degrees over our lifetimes, when we choose to act in some way that is oriented toward fulfilling our social and
psychological needs, not our market-exchangeable needs. It is that part of our lives and our motivational structure that social production taps, and on which it thrives. There is nothing mysterious about this. It is evident to any of us who rush home to our family or to a restaurant or bar with friends at the end of a workday, rather than staying on for another hour of overtime or to increase our billable hours; or at least
regret it when we cannot." --Benkler, _Wealth of Networks_

"Human beings are, and always have been, diversely motivated beings. We act instrumentally, but also noninstrumentally. We act for material gain, but also for psychological well-being and gratification, and for social connectedness. There is nothing new or earth-shattering about this, except perhaps to some economists. " -- Benkler, _Wealth of Networks_

Re:Not Quite.

[MindKata]

"Blogs shift power from broadcasters to individuals"... yes thats good, but advertisers are also using misinformation on blogs, to create so called Flogs. So how many popular blogs are really Flogs? ... However many it is, they are definately trying to game the system, to get popular blogs which are really just flogs.

Advertising + Blogs + advertisers_with_no_ethics = Flogs
http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=113945
e.g. "Sony and agency Zipatoni have come under fire for one of their marketing tactics for the Sony PSP. Sony has added its name to a growing list of flogs [fake blogs] including McDonald's, WalMart and Lonely Girl 15, that are being called out by consumers. This isn't the first time Sony has been caught and questioned about the ethics of its marketing practices."

Re:Blogs != News

[Bourbonium]

Well, give /. some credit for attempting to be "fair and balanced." FUD or not, I read this headline as a response to yesterday's article promoting exactly the opposite prediction from Red Hat's CEO http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/21/0116221 that the financial crisis will be a major boon for open source software. You may recall that Keen is the same fellow who was pimping his book on The Colbert Report a few months ago claiming that anything given away as free is worth absolutely nothing and that the internet will collapse from all the amateurs who are creating content. Check out his biography and you'll learn that, as an entrepreneur at the turn of the last century, he was a victim of the collapse of the tech bubble in 2000. I taste some very bitter grapes in his opinions about the web.

Re:Blogs != News

[cayenne8]

"It's all anecdotal, partisan, and un-researched crap."

That statement also describes the CBS Evening News...

:)