Open source economics
17th June 2002
Food for thought: Joel Spolsky on the economics of Open Source software. Joel starts by explaining the economic concept of complements—products that complement your product so that if their price goes down, demand for your product increases. He then goes on to demonstrate how this concept explains the decision of several large companies (including IBM, Sun and HP) to financially support open source software. As is usual for Joel on Software the article makes fascinating reading.
More recent articles
- Tips on prompting ChatGPT for UK technology secretary Peter Kyle - 3rd June 2025
- How often do LLMs snitch? Recreating Theo's SnitchBench with LLM - 31st May 2025
- Talking AI and jobs with Natasha Zouves for News Nation - 30th May 2025