Lost Article.

[swestrup]

Sometime in the last year I read an article online that I would love to find again, but I have no idea where to look. It was an analysis of the value of Open Source software using the same techniques as are commonly used to analyze the component values of stocks and bonds.

There is a type of value analysis (whose name I forget) which allows you to separate out the value of a stock due to dividend rate from its base value. This has allowed folks to sell derivative instruments which (for example) don't pay dividends, but sell much cheaper.

In a similar way, the article analyzes the cost of commercial software, decomposing its value into components due to its 'free' support, its upgrade policy, and its inherent base value. It turns out that most of the value of commercial software is in the first two items, and that Open Source software can be seen to be competing on a level playing field by not offering them (at least, not in the same form).

Ring any bells for anyone? I would love to re-find that URL.

Comments

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

allo!

So I ofcours have no idea what you are talking about, but I tired to find it anyways.

What better than to Google something you don't know?

I came up with

http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_eval.html

and http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html as a subpage.


Of course it might be just random junk as I don't really get it and didn' bother to read more than a couple of pages

[swestrup]

Thanks, but its not really what I was looking. The article I was thinking about was much shorter and was narrowly focussed on monetary value analysis.