The harsh #economics of open source
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-harsh-reality-of-open-source-8880f6640a34?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3
In the free market, the laws of supply and demand would suggest that the lower the price of something is, the easier it is to sell it — Based on this, you could infer that something which costs $0 and which delivers real value to its users would “fly off the shelves”.Unfortunately, this is rarely the case when it comes to open source #software. When applied to the software industry, the laws of supply and demand seem to break down in surprising ways.One unusual aspect of the industry is that the supply curve for software does not taper off as it gets closer to the $0 price point; even at that point, there is still a lot of competition — Not only between different open source projects but also between ‘free’ (ad-supported) software services.What is most surprising about the software industry (...)
#open-source-economics #open-source #economics-of-open-source