[p2p-research] OSS did not create any substantial number of jobs in the IT-sector.

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Rishab,

Gehrard Wagner here below makes the very strong claim that:

OSS did not create any
substantial number of jobs in the IT-sector.

Do you have any  documentation on this topic that we could share, given your
involvement in the FLOSS studies?

Michel

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <ciresearchers-request at vancouvercommunity.net>
Date: Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:56 AM
Subject: Digest for list ciresearchers
To: ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net


Table of content :

 1. OSS jobs report
 2. Re: [ciresearchers] OA and OSS: universally applicable principles?
 3. RE: [ciresearchers] FW: [governance] Open Patents? Hundreds of
   thousands of innovations - most in the form of patents
 4. Re: [ciresearchers] FW: [governance] Open Patents? Hundreds of
   thousands of innovations - most in the form of patents
 5. Govt of Oman has blocked Skype here due complaints by telecom
   companies
 6. Re: [ciresearchers] Govt of Oman has blocked Skype here due
   complaints by telecom companies
 7. RE: [ciresearchers] FW: [governance] Open Patents? Hundreds of
   thousands of innovations - most in the form of patents
 8. Re: $5,000 grant program, combining gifts in kind and cash, for
   nonprofits that want to enhance communications


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
To: ciresearchers-request at vancouvercommunity.net, contentissimo at chello.at
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:18:44 +0700
Subject: OSS jobs report
Dear Gehrard,

you write:


A recent scientific report on OSS revealed that did not create any
substantial number of jobs in the IT-sector.
Only distributors as Redhad benefited. Thats it.

Is is possible to have a reference,

I find this quite counter-intuitive, since I've heard from both floss
developers in kerala and ecuador that they have nearly 100% employment, and
purely anecdotally of course, 99% of the programmers I meet have jobs ... of
course, they could be displacing other jobs and not creating new ones,

so in any case, your report would be most interesting,

Michel

see
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/estimating-the-value-of-the-free-economy-at-300-billion/2008/07/31

Estimating the value of the free economy at 300
billion<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/estimating-the-value-of-the-free-economy-at-300-billion/2008/07/31>
[image: photo of Michel Bauwens]
Michel Bauwens
31st July 2008

 Chris Anderson has done a useful
exercise<http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2008/07/how-big-is-the.html>to
estimate the value of the ‘really free economy’ (which excludes free
as a
gimmick and advertising-supported media), which he considers to be in the
ballpark of $300 billion.

The article starts by explaining a typology of the free economy, which I
think has been done better elsewhere.

See here for an alternative typology of the free
economy<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/steve-bosserman-on-economic-sustainability-in-a-world-of-open-design/2008/02/19>(graphic
here<http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/steve_bosserman/2008/02/09/giving_it_away_making_money.htm>
)

See also my own “ladder of open business
models<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/what-kind-of-economy-are-we-moving-to-3-a-hierarchy-of-engagement-between-companies-and-communities/2007/10/05>
“.

*Here is Chris Anderson’s calculation:*

“*Open source software (service and support around free software):*

** The “Linux ecosystem” (everything from RedHat to IBM’s open source
consulting business) is around $30 billion today.*

** Other companies built around open source, such as MySQL ($50m annual
revenues) and Sugar CRM ($15m), probably add up to less than $1 billion.*

*Free-to-play videogames:*

** These are mostly online massively multiplayer games, which are free to
play but make money by charging the most dedicated gamers for digital assets
(upgrades, clothing, new levels, etc). They started in South Korea and China
(where they’re now a $1 billion business) and have now come to the US, with
games like Runescape and NeoPets.*

** The “casual games market” (think everything from online card games to
flash games) is now at nearly $3 billion.*

*Free music:*

** How much of Apple’s iPod $4 billion in annual sales should be credited to
the libraries of “free” MP3 that created demand for gigabyte storage
devices? How much of MySpace’s $65 billion estimated value is due to the
free music bands put there? How much of the $2 billion concert business is
driven by P2P file sharing?*

*So what’s the bottom line? By a strict definition of free (just the third
category), it’s pretty easy to get to $50 billion total revenues. Include
the next most interesting free market, online ad-driven content and
services, and you’re around $75 billion. Expand that to the traditional
ad-supported media, and you can get to $150 billion. Go worldwide, and you
can easily double all those figures.*

*Whichever definition you like, there’s a lot of money to be made around
free*.”

Of course, money is not the only value evaluation
system<http://p2pfoundation.net/Money_is_not_the_Only_Value_Measurement_System>,
and there are sections of the free economy, where no cash changes hands at
all <http://p2pfoundation.net/Adventure_Economy>, for which we need
different wealth acknowledgment
systems<http://p2pfoundation.net/Wealth_Acknowledgment_Systems>
.

To measure, this kind of ‘immaterial value’, we need a new type of ‘peer to
peer metrics’, which we are monitoring via this special
page<http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Metrics>
.

Chris calculation also do not take into account eventual destructive effects
on monetary wealth, that for example open source software may have caused to
proprietary software, estimated at a loss of at $60 billion
annually<http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39397439,00.htm>
.
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