Economist.com: The Economics of Sharing
There is a nice article in The Economist on the economics of sharing:
The characteristics of information—be it software, text or even biotech research—make it an economically obvious thing to share. It is a “non-rival” good: i.e., your use of it does not interfere with my use. Better still, there are network effects: i.e., the more people who use it, the more useful it is to any individual user. Best of all, the existence of the internet means that the costs of sharing are remarkably low. The cost of distribution is negligible, and co-ordination is easy because people can easily find others with similar goals and can contribute when convenient.
Good stufff. It’s nice to see the mainstream media not only paying attention to FOSS, but actually beginning to understand it and recognise its value and advantages.
February 8th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Not that I’m one to knock positive press for FOSS, but it can’t really be an economic argument without bringing in the concept of value. There are plenty of examples where the sharing of information is not economically obvious, a treasure map for instance. Information Wants to be Free Myth
February 8th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
Yes, I agree Kris. The article focuses on the sort of “gift-culture” that emerges in a society with an embarassment of riches, like the SETI@home example. It doesn’t mention what is value-added about FOSS at all. But for all that it was a nice article, and I hope to see more stuff like this in the mainstream media.