Re: Books on FOSS (was Re: Re: Purer Than Thou)
On Jan 24, 2007, at 10:34 AM, sharif islam wrote:
I would highly recommend reading, Steven Weber’s “The Success of Open Source”. Here’s a detail review of the book by Stefan Merten of Project Oekonux. http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg03547.html
At which we read:
“Operating systems like Linux in particular, and almost software in
general, actually are subject to positive network externalities. Call
it a network good, or an anti-rival good (an awkward, but nicely
descriptive term). In simpler language, it means that the value of a
piece of software to any user increases as more people use the
software on their machines and in their particular settings.”
Which makes me wonder…could something like FOSS happen in any other
economic sector? How many things are like this? Works of art popped
into my mind, but my enjoyment of Beethoven is unaffected by the
number of other people enjoying Beethoven, and my enjoyment of an
obscure indie band might be reduced if their number of fans gets too
large. So regardless of what one thinks of FOSS itself, is there any
way it could be generalized as an economic model? I kinda doubt it -
esp if you’re dealing with rival goods, which all goods and most
services are. And software itself is actually a very small economic
sector - well under 1% of gross output in the US.
Doug