Free Software

When professor Zappala presented the information on the free software movement i was very perplexed about the economics of the whole thing. so i found this article on written by Benjamin Hak-Fung Chiao of New York University. He sustains much of what Dr. Zappala was teaching and gave me a little more insight into the whole economic side of the story.

Being an economics major i have always been taught that economic behavior dictates everything in our lives. so i couldn't understand what economic minded individual would agree to allow their software rights go for free. but this paper shed some light on the issue. Firstly, the free source software does provide some economic gain for the population as a whole. and i thought economic benefit of the masses is somewhat admirable or at least it made me think that this model is somewhat economically feasable.  He argues: "Estimates show that if the Red Hat Linux, a flagship of FOSS, had been programmed using traditional proprietary means, it would have taken over one billion U.S. dollars and the equivalent of 8,000 person-years to develop the three million lines of code." Or in other words the economy as a whole benefits from free software. 

But i still struggled with this idea because i think that individual economic gain is a much better motivator for anything than the 'general good'. However, there is some room for personal economic gain in the argument for free source software. Here is where the economic behavior comes in: "one can obtain income by providing support and complimentary services." he asserts: "If one puts his newly-developed FOSS on a home PC with limited bandwidth for downloading, but is not allowed to charge a fee for distribution, users are forced to suffer congestion when everyone rushes to download the software. The value of the time, which is a rent for the software, is dissipated. Yet there is no change in the supply of the software. On the other hand, if there is no such restriction, the software can be written on a CD and mailed to buyers. People who pay more will get it first, perhaps by asking for faster shipping" so speed and expertise become marketable products in the software world. The article also suggests how this software could be sold in stores in order to earn the convenience market: "Red Hat can induce users to buy the Red Hat Linux CD packages from computer stores". 

So, while this paper was still difficult to understand due to economic jargon and a basic lack of understanding of software, it really helped me to understand more of the free software movement.

i dont know how to post the PDF file on my blog here. can anyone help? in the meantime here is a link.