The Simple Economics of Open Source

[Robin Becker]

In article <1255786824-35980039 at hypernet.com>, Gordon McMillan
<gmcm at hypernet.com> writes
>Why does everyone miss the main point?
>
>I (and you) are literally 100s of times more productive because 
>of open source. Imagine having to either invent it all yourself, 
>or duct tape together expensive half-assed closed "solutions". 
>Shudder.

Developers who share code may actually do so for other than friendly
reasons. If M$ released win2000 source into the world it might actually
slow down Linux development.

I prefer not to worry about the exact electronics/chemistry behind my
computer. So in that sense my 'open sourceness' has limits. I guess this
argument has to do with the relative value 'developers' put on the
tools. On win32 VC++ is valuable; while gcc/egcs is really useful on
unices.
 
>
>Developers who share code are *enormously* more productive 
>than those who don't. So the range of problems that can be 
>attacked increases geometrically, so computers penetrate 
>new areas, so geeks stand a better chance of making a living.

This is a competitive position to take. Geeks presumably compete with
non-geeks for resources.

In addition the inter geek co-operation may actually be a form of
competition for other things like 'mindset' 'noosphere' etc. Painters
exchange ideas, concepts and criticism freely, but compete for
customers.

>
>Win-win situations are rarely profitably analyzed by 
>competitive models.
>
>
>- Gordon
>

Wrong! Non-zero sum games are widely studied in many areas of
mathematics, economics and control theory. Just because we can both win
doesn't mean we're not in competition. Win-Win games tend not to be so
stable as minimal-loss minimal-loss (Nash) games and for that reason are
of less interest. It requires a constant flow of information (co-
operation) to achieve best-best so that is rarely achieved or sustained.

Win-Win for the group of geeks is a sub-game in the wider community. As
a group the geeks strive to turn their knowledge into something useful
to get income. It may be that inter geek co-operation aids the group as
a whole; certainly that cannot be simply asserted as there exists a
large number of geeks who work only for $/£ and who co-operate with the
prince of darkness in Seattle. I don't believe any comparative study of
commercial vs opensourcerer geeks has yet been carried out to see which
group does better.
-not to be take too serious-ly yrs- 
Robin Becker