Re: [SLUG] Net worth of Open Source Software

From: Paul M Foster (paulf@quillandmouse.com)
Date: Tue May 08 2001 - 23:54:08 EDT


On Tue, May 08, 2001 at 09:16:03PM -0400, Russell Hires wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I'd mentioned this in another post, but haven't gotten any response...
>
> Is it possible to put a dollar figure on all of the Open Source/Free
> software that's been developed so far? I mean, if M$ can sit there and
> say that if they don't make a profit they can't invest in making better
> software, we should be able to sit back and say, "Yeah, all us free
> software/open source software folks have invested so much more in
> developing software that M$ can't hold a candle to the amount of money
> we've "invested" for free. How much would it have cost one (mythical)
> company to have employed all the developers of Free/Open Source
> software? How much could it have charged for all of that if it weren't
> Free/Open? I bet if we put a dollar figure on that kind of thing, it
> would make M$ look like a warship in a bath tub, compared to the Real
> Aircraft Carrier in the Ocean. :-)
>

Any estimate would be a WAG (wild a** guess). But I'd guess it's a whole
lot more than the amount paid to programmers at Microsoft through their
whole history.

Paul



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