Open Source: No one is working for free

“People continue to wonder how to make money in the free and
open source software world. It’s dressed up in discussions of how
one makes money when you give away the software for free, or why
developers are working for free. It can likewise lead to a
management backlash of not contributing to FOSS projects because
some think their developers are working on FOSS instead of their
own work.

“Here’s a different way to think about it. Everyone is familiar
with the idea of a normal “bell curve” distribution representing
R&D investment over time. As a technology is better understood
and a product succeeds in the marketplace R&D investment
increases, and over time as new technologies advance the R&D
investment in the original technology and product wanes. The
function can also represent the “knowledge” gained or the increase
in the intellectual asset base. Taking the integral of the normal
distribution gives us the total investment and is the “S”-curve
that is familiar to many when discussing technology innovation over
time.”

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