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

Shakeout more likely

[Anonymous Coward]

All you may see is a shakeout of commercial Web 2.0 ventures that were going nowhere and were only being made a fuss of "because it's web 2.0". The same hype that drove the original dotcom bubble. A shakeout of dodgy commercial ventures, yes, Opensource on the other hand is likely to get stronger in this climate.

I predict the reverse

[pfbram]

On the contrary, out-of-work software engineers will have some spare time on their hands. CSci grads facing a tough job market will be interested in building a portfolio for their first job interviews. What better way than to start or participate in an open source effort? It's a neighborly thing to do. When times are tough, generosity is on the rise -- rather than decline. We've helped our neighbors with various things and vice-versa.

End of the Internet Predicted: News at 11

[eln]

His whole premise is deeply flawed. People don't post stuff on these sites because they are so fat and happy that they just can't find anything better to do with their time. They do it because they want to be known for something, or they want to show off, or because they just want to contribute to a large project. None of these things are really affected by the economy.

Okay, some people might contribute less because they have to take 2 jobs or something, but that's a temporary phenomenon. For most people, their jobs will still occupy about 8 hours a day, and that still leaves several hours every day for farting around on the Internet, which often includes submitting content to these so-called "Open Source" content sites.

User-generated content was there at the beginning of the Web, and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe CNN will toss the iReport thing, but not because of the economic downturn. Sure, they might decide that now is a good time to end it because they have a convenient excuse, but the real reason to end it is because it's a cesspool of mouth breathers posting pictures of their cats and saying the same kind of mindless garbage that gets posted to CNN's Political Ticker. The iReport site doesn't do much more than allow CNN to post stories that would be of no more than local interest otherwise (ooh, a car on fire! Alert the media!).

As for Wikipedia, it has deep and fundamental flaws that may or may not eventually lead to its downfall, but the economic condition isn't going to change that one way or the other.

Re: I think we should be able to

[mcgrew]

Are you the guy who modded my comment in the wikipedia story "flamebait"? Have you no sense of humor, or at least no sense of irony?

Yesterday was a story saying the economic downturn was a boon to open source, now another, equally misinformed dumbass says it will kill open source.

I think these guys are hilaruious, myself.

The reality is the economic downturn (call a spade a spade, we're going to have a depression) will probably do neither. Of the two stories, however, this one is the dumbest. But not by much.

Yesterday's mcgrew journal, Open Office Blues, about a non-nerd and open source, illistrates perfectly why open source software has not taken the world by storm despite its superiority.

Re: I think we should be able to

[JustKidding]

Ok, you have a point. It's just that I hear this sort of thing all the time.

"Why would you do all that work and then give it away?"

For me, as soon as money enters the picture, the fun is (mostly) gone; with money comes responsibility, whoever is providing the money buys the right to demand answers and project deadlines. It's no longer "because I enjoy doing it", but "because he tells me to".

I think he either just doesn't understand this concept, or he ignores it, because frankly, it makes *him* completely irrelevant. It must be very frustrating, being an economist, and people suddenly start doing stuff that's not about money.

He conveniently forgets that a lot of people who contribute to OSS aren't professional programmers during working hours, he is completely ignorant to the fact that there are people who know how to write computer software *outside of the US* (gosh!).

Besides, WTF does Myspace have to do with OSS?

Re:Money?

[nido]

People used to do most things for free. See Money and the Criss of Civilization:

... To understand it, let's get clear on what constitutes a "good" or a "service." In economics, these terms refer to something that is exchanged for money. If I babysit your children for free, economists don't count it as a service. It cannot be used to pay a financial debt: I cannot go to the supermarket and say, "I watched my neighbor's kids this morning, so please give me food." But if I open a day care center and charge you money, I have created a "service." GDP rises and, according to economists, society has become wealthier. ...

Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?

Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.

In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.

The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. ...

Re:Yeah right.

[theaveng]

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

On the other hand, it's difficult to "do things" like update OpenOffice, if your electric company just pulled the plug, or you lose your house to the bank. If the next decade becomes a Depression-Lite economy, then there will be a lot fewer engineers with the ability to update software. They'll be busy just trying to survive, with little spare time or cash to continue their open-source "hobby".

Re:Yeah right.

[TypoNAM]

If that is the case then how did the open source projects come to exist in the first place? Matter of observation I saw a boom in open source projects after the dotcom bubble burst and even open source projects that existed before the collapse even got even more contributions after that. I certainly saw better progress from kernel development to KDE maturity.

Yeah I know... I know... You were just showing the other side of the ever fake coin. ;)

Student paper quota

[matt me]

Front page article on Cambridge institutions and their assets in the credit crunch. To quote: Cambridge Union [debating society] President Adam Bott said:

The two services we offer are drinking and arguing, both always in demand in tough times. Broadly speaking our current strategy is to spend our way through the recession. Economist friends tell me this is akin to smoking your way through a heart attack, but if there's one thing we ought to have learned, it's that economists can't be trusted.