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Interestingly enough, a fellow reader has written an even better synopsis of
the essay I wrote than I did. To wit, by Jack Carrol:
Open source software development is a barter economy with some very unusual
economic properties. The original author of a piece of OSS gets paid, but
not in money. The author gets paid in software. So does everybody else who
contributes a feature or a bug fix. This form of payback is very real, for
all of its intangibility. The return is huge-- everybody who contributes to
the growing program ends up with the useof a much more capable and
higher-quality product than they could afford to develop on their own, and
they get a product which has been carefully enhanced to meet their exact
needs. The actual developers aren't the only contributors and beneficiaries,
either. Everyone who contributes documentation, distribution services,
mutual tech support, or publicity participates in this barter economy.
Full paper? Available at http://doxpara.netpedia.net/core.html .
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