Simon Phipps wrote:
I was with you at the beginning of that, Don, but I'm surprised to
hear you saying "free R&D" given what you've written on LXer
recently. It's not free/gratis. It costs every one of us time, many
of us money as well. As the cost of the R & D is not bourne by a
single entity, you're right that it's pointless to try to estimate a
dollar value for it unless you also establish the exchange rate. But
it's not free/gratis. Each community member invests according to
their ability and goals, and they do so because they expect to see a
return on that investment on their own terms and timescale.
For some, the return is in the form of social good achieved, for
example in enabling communities in the two-thirds world to function
on equal terms with the globalisers. For others, the return is
achieved in de-positioning commercial competitors who believe
"closed" is a commercial advantage. For some, the return is achieved
in the sustaining of a market in which their services have commercial
value. For some, the return is achieved through the commercialisation
of a software product built with code from the community in which
they participate. For some, the return is a sense of satisfaction in
working with software. All of these and more are in-play, and the
dollar value of the investments is not really subject to analysis.
To describe the work of each of these community members as free/
gratis is to allow the framing of the conversation by the old world.
The truth is that each open source community is built from a diverse
mix of participants, each present on their own terms and for their
own purposes and each working at cost to themselves in order to
achieve the return they seek, without concern over either the costs
or goals of other community members. /Each member is responsible for
covering their own costs/ and because of that there's a level playing
field for all participants.
So please don't say we're here providing "free R&D". The actual
investment is huge, I would guess of the order of trillions of
dollars for the aggregate F/OSS communities globally measured in US
salaries. But no-one ever sees that cost because the F/OSS community
is constructed from individual project communities each of which
bears its own cost in exchange for its own return on its own terms.
It's a different model and we collectively need commentators to
realise that distributed participation is not the behaviour of anti-
commercial crazies but rather the effective response of a global
software community to globalisation by monopolists.
Please instead say "measured the same way, the investment of the FOSS
community of communities undoubtedly exceeds Microsoft's by an order
of magnitude or more, but that's not relevant to the way F/OSS
works." Take the opportunity to reframe the conversation.
Warmly,
Simon
I've rarely seen this explained so succintly, a definite addition to my
quote file.
Thanks
--
Graham Lauder
OpenOffice.org Marcon (Marketing Contact) NZ
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html
INGOTs Gold Assessor Trainer
http://www.theingots.org
Member Opendocument Fellowship
http://www.opendocumentfellowship.org
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