SLIDE 1
Open Source Development
- Dr. James A. Bednar
jbednar@inf.ed.ac.uk http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jbednar
SAPM Spring 2007: Open Source 1
Traditional Commercial Software Development
Producing consumer-oriented software is often done in much the same way as for tangible mass-produced products, such as furniture or cars. E.g., a company:
- Designs the product
- Produces copies of it
- Provides a copy to any consumer willing to pay for it
Most software products with widespread name recognition, e.g. from Microsoft, fit into this model.
SAPM Spring 2007: Open Source 2
Traditional Assumptions
Implicit assumptions applying to tangible goods like furniture:
- 1. Making each copy costs money, and so it makes
sense for customers to pay for each copy
- 2. Customers and other companies cannot easily make
their own copies, so they have an incentive to purchase from the company
- 3. Development costs can most efficiently be recouped
(and profits made) by charging per-copy fees
- 4. It’s reasonable to expect improvements to the product
to come only from the company
SAPM Spring 2007: Open Source 3
Intangible Goods
Software and other intangible goods like music and text can be duplicated for essentially zero cost, by consumers and companies alike, and so any restrictions on copying must be enforced artificially. Software costs are for development and for support, independent of the number of copies produced, and so are not well-matched to per-copy revenue models. Unlike tangible goods, software can be modified by users to meet their needs better and then redistributed, without needing the original company to produce the result.
SAPM Spring 2007: Open Source 4