Economics of Open Source

Economics of open source
The economic impact of open source models is going to be very high, not only in the software industry, but in society in general. In this section, we discuss in some detail some of the more foreseeable issues related to this impact. Some of them are just projections from current trends, but some others have already arrived. To begin with, several new economic models for open source projects will be presented (externally funded, internally funded, unfunded, and internally used). Later on, the issue of total cost of ownership will be discussed in subsection 5.5. In subsection 5.6 some discussion on the macro-economic consequences of widespread use of open source will be introduced. To finish this section, some impressions on the future of the software market, considering open source models, are discussed in subsection 5.7.

The subsections on new economic models are important because many traditional models of the software industry are heavily based on propr...