Open-Source Software Is Worth a Lot More Than You Pay for It

&gt; Open-source software may well be the greatest “public good” the market economy has ever produced. What it shows is the power of voluntary social cooperation.<p>And that&#x27;s why Richard Stallman deserves to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Source paper[0] is discussed at [1]<p>Related blog post criticizing this study[2]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=4693148" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;papers.ssrn.com&#x2F;sol3&#x2F;papers.cfm?abstract_id=4693148</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39340277">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39340277</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39340146">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39340146</a>

Here are the implications of this:<p>The biggest beneficiaries of open source software are massive corporations such as Google, Facebook, etc.<p>By being worth more that what pay for it, open source is the largest transfer of value from the working class (software programmers) to the capital class (the owners of these corporations ).

The market economy deserves not one iota of credit for the Free Software I have written (millions of downloads). It was produced and donated to the world in spite of the market economy, not because of it.

I wonder how much open source software sits under what’s required to create this post, and that powers Bloomberg. I also wonder how much Bloomberg pays open source projects.<p>I got a paywall though so I can’t read the article. I guess there’s some irony there.

For most people, Open-Source software is free at the very least warrants <i>some</i> money going towards the programmers, certainly much more than is the norm today.

Summer of Code should be a well-funded non-profit.