Measuring the value of OSS

[pcihon]

The GitHub Policy Team is interested in supporting research on the economic impact of open source.

Check out our blog on the topic, which cites some good past research and outlines three themes that we think are important.

If you have comments, good sources, and/or further questions you'd like to see answered, please comment in this issue! And if you're a researcher interested in this area, we'd be especially interested to hear from you, whether in this issue, on Twitter, or via email to [email protected].

[TheFrenchGhosty]

There's a fundamental problem with the "economic impact" of open source though: most of the people getting money out of it aren't the people working on it in the first place, it's companies "leeching" from it, and yes, this includes GitHub (and Microsoft in general).

The recent mess with fakerjs/colorjs showed that, even if the developer of those libraries was working on it since years, he still wasn't getting paid by the companies making millions/billions thanks to those libraries.

The only companies making money with open source... are those selling service/support to other companies, which is a problem.

No one is doing open source work to get paid, but at the same time no one is doing it so that companies can make millions/billions thanks to it.

It's not policymakers that should force companies to do something, it's companies that should finally understand that they should fund the projects they depend on, instead of thinking "oh free work!".

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The benefits of open source is easy to see: freedom. I can do what I want (as long as I respect the license) with any open source project, the problem, however, is that companies also can (reason why my personal projects are either AGPLv3 - so that if someone fork it, it has to stay open source - or CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 - so that no one other than me can use it for commercial purpose).

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"Open innovation" shouldn't be measured by how much money was made with it, but by how much the world/people were affected by it. As an example: the linux kernel/the GNU coreutils, sure, companies now can make money with servers running GNU/Linux, but the people can now have an operating system that's their own, away from all corporations.

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How can you help?

Contribute.

Either do like everyone doing open source work, and open source your work, or funds the open source projects you use/depend on. It's that easy.

The world needs open source work, however the developers doing open source work can't live in this world without being funded.

-A guy doing open source work daily (while being jobless/in debt).

[chadwhitacre]

Here's some napkin math I did a few years ago:

• Open Source Captures 0.02% of the Value it Creates, Leaving $852B/yr on the Table
• Your Company Should Probably Pay $2,000 per Person for Open Source

(BTW, I used the $2k/eng/yr figure when putting together Sentry's funding initiative last fall ... and also we did a follow-up event w/ GitHub Sponsors. :)

Now to actually read your blog post and see if this is relevant ... ;)

[germonprez]

Thanks for starting this conversation @pcihon. In the CHAOSS project we're quite interested in models that capture either economic value or identify criticality in a dependency tree. I'd love to talk more about this.

[sgoggins]

@pcihon : Thanks for getting this started! Adding to @germonprez 's expression of interest, I have a few ideas along the lines of :

1. Dependency valuation
2. Estimating labor investment using something like boyter/scc
3. The relationship between community health, sustainability, welcoming newcomers, and value potentially derived from lower risk associated with doing those things well. I'd love to talk more!

[Jaimeyann]

Hi @pcihon , really exciting conversation.
Regarding the questions you raise, here are some things that come to mind:

Macroeconomic Impact:
The research from Mariana Mazzucato measured the impact of public investments in R&D, and the value it generated for the economy (jobs, revenues, training costs...). Her research might be inspiring in measuring the same value for open source.
https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-value-of-everything

Individual benefits of open source:

1. How should we measure the impact of individual software projects within dependencies?
   This doesn't take account of dependencies, but there is an interesting report on calculating community ROI that might apply to the value of open source as well:
   https://www.feverbee.com/roi/the-benefits-and-value-of-an-online-community/

2. How should maintainters be paid?
   I'm working on a proposal to create an open patent model to fund those who create and maintain open source creations. The idea is an alternative to patents, but could also translate to software:

• You have an idea that you share in open source.
• You apply for an open patent and it's granted.
• Anyone can make and sell your idea (including you, obviously).
• Everyone who sells your idea gets taxed (including you, obviously).
• A percentage of all that tax comes back to you, the patent holder, as royalty

There is a breakdown of how it would work at https://www.openpatent.cc

Looking forward to follow what you find out.

[LawrenceHecht]

You already have my name and that of my colleagues in the proposal we sent in response to November's RFP. That proposal wasn't focused on economics though. I am working on this topic with several NGOs. Please reach out so we can collaborate.

[Linh244234]

Cái con mèo này, mày mò cả xuống dưới này,. Đây không phải là típ típ đâu mà nhờ con chim đó đeo lên.