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

Tue Jan 12 14:39:51 CET 2010

There are few different issues here:

1. Economic value of OSS
2. Employment caused by OSS
3. Economic Production caused by OSS

1 and 3 can be quite different.  OSS may have been hugely valuable but in
itself did not create much income.  The same could be said of the Internet
infrastructure, for example.  Cisco and AT&T are big deals, but a tiny
fraction of the implications economically of the Internet.

In the same way, employment can be direct or indirect.  Kevin is hinting at
this too.  Direct employment may be low but indirect employment may be very
high.  Again, that would be fine in economic terms.

The same arguments apply more generally to P2P or any shared infrastructure
(e.g. an airport in a city).  The direct economic impacts are relevant but
fractional.

Another way topic is to consider the general causes of value.  This is
harder and more controversial.  But the relevance to P2P is very high
because it almost immediately starts to open questions about intellectual
property, patents, etc.  No market theorist can explain patents.  They
simply don't fit any classical economic models at all.  Having the king
grant a right is a complete chimera meant to alter markets not enable them.
Is it true the such distortions raise value?  Possibly.  But that doesn't
mean they are economically beneficial.  Having highly specialized stock
market rules raises the value of Wall Street traders but it
doesn't necessarily increase economic output.

My own view is that the greatest economic production is achieved by having
strong, readily available infrastructure and ready access to a broad
spectrum of enabling technologies at low cost.  Whether these are free,
open, etc. is a nit.  Cheap is as a good as open to me.  It's all about
barriers to productivity and access.  The rest is religion.  Low cost and
low fees for seeing the code are little different than open.  What is costly
to society is the right to protect information for long times without any
general benefit.  This rewards innovation too much.

Ryan

On 1/12/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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>
>

-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
Cayman Islands
(345) 916-1712
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