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[ox-en] Antirivalness



Hi list!

We had the terms rival and non-rival goods a couple of times here.
I'm still reading this **excellent** book from Steven Weber ("The
Success of Open Source") and he makes a very interesting point about
the rivalness of Free Software (Page 153f.):

  [...Thinking about classical concepts and thoughts about non-rival
  good which are all not very satisfying for Free Software...]

  I believe the solution to this problem lies in pushing the concept
  of non-rivalness one step further. Software in many circumstances is
  more than simply non-rival. Operating systems like Linux in
  particular, and almost software in general, actually are subject to
  positive network externalities. Call it a network good, or an
  anti-rival good (an awkward, but nicely descriptive term). In simpler
  language, it means that the value of a piece of software to any user
  increases as more people use the software on their machines and in
  their particular settings. Compatibility in the standard sense of a
  network good is one reason why this is so. Just as it is more
  valuable for me to have a fax machine if lots of other people also
  have fax machines, as more computers in the world run a particular
  operating system or application it becomes easier to communicate
  and share files across those computers. Each becomes slightly more
  valuable to existing users as each new users enters the picture.

  Open source software makes an additional and very important use of
  anti-rivalness, in maintenance and debugging. Remember the argument
  that there exists an infinite number of paths through the lines of
  code in even a moderately complex piece of software. The more users
  (and the more different kind of users) actively engage in using a
  piece of software, the more likely that any particular bug will
  surface in someone's experience. And once a bug is identified, it
  becomes possible to fix it, improving the software at a faster rate.
  Thus is hugely important to the economics of software users, because
  customization, debugging and maintenance usually accounts for at
  least half (and sometimes considerably more) of the total cost of
  ownership of enterprise software.

  The point is that open source software is not simply a non-rival good
  in the sense that it can tolerate free riding without reducing the
  stock of the good for the contributors. It is actually anti-rival in
  the sense that *the system as a whole positively benefits from free
  riders*. Some (small) percentage of free riders will provide
  something of value to the joint product - even if it is just
  reporting a bug out of frustration, requiring a new feature, or
  complaining about a function that could be better implemented. In
  fact one wonders if it makes sense to use the term "free rider"
  here. Regardless - the more "free riders" in this setting, the
  better.


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

--
Please note this message is written on an offline laptop
and send out in the evening of the day it is written. It
does not take any information into account which may have
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