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OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office
rbowen of SourceForge writes with an interesting way to look at the value of certain free software options: "Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 has averaged 138,928 downloads per day. That is an average value to the public of $21 million per day, as calculated by savings over buying the competing product. Or $7.61 billion (7.61 thousand million) per year." (That works out to about $150 per copy of MS Office. There are some holes in the argument, but it holds true for everyone who but for a free office suite would have paid that much for Microsoft's. The numbers are even bigger if you toss in LibreOffice, too.)
The summary also notes this is savings to the end user. If I don't need all the features found in MS Office I shouldn't need to buy it. If I get what I need and pay $0 I've saved $150.
That's the whole point of the summary. Some segment of the public are getting what they need to get their "office productivity" tasks done for less cost.
And how many of those who downloaded 3.4.1, also had 3.4.0 before? Even MS makes minor updates available for free...
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You are applying the logic of a corporation to a non-profit. This is like applying classical mechanics to massless particles. It doesn't work. The price/demand curve is based on competition. Nonprofits are not competing. They are giving it away for free, regardless of the value. There is no price/demand curve for them.
TFA is talking about the "value" of OpenOffice to the world, the value provided by a nonprofit organization.
If a group of doctors volunteer their time and work in a clinic and treat the poor, pro bono, are they not entitled to claim the value that they provide is based on their normal rate? Same question for lawyers who provide pro bono counsel to those who cannot afford it. Can't they claim the value they produce per their normal hourly rates?
No one would argue that the value of their volunteer efforts is zero because their "customers" would not pay the prevailing rate. That is irrelevant, since no one is asking them to pay that rate. It is a charitable act.
The article merely applies the same logic to professionals in the engineering field, whose public service is in the form of publishing open source software.