It's a question of motives (Score 1)

I don't think that there is any (valid) question as to whether or not open source works under our economic models. The question lies in why, when given the choice, developers choose to contribute their valuable free time and brain power to a project that gives them no short-term direct benefit. It's a question of maximizing utility. We know that open source progammers do maximize their utility (they must), but the difficulty lies in explaining exactly how this occurs.

I'm currently working on my senior thesis which attempts to model this behavior in participants in open source programming (ideas and help appreciated [e-mail]) As an economist, I'm arrogant enough to believe that there's a way to model just about everything mathematically, and so I'm attempting to do this with open source. I'm currently working under the assumption that there are 3 types of people: strictly non-programming users, programmers who contribute to a project, and programmers who free-ride on the project. My purpose is to try to determine what causes a distinction between the 2 types of programmers, and if one programmer is motivated to free-ride, why all programmers aren't also motivated to do the same thing, thus causing a collapse of the whole system. (I know that all programmers aren't the same, but a model needs some sort of simplification, and part of what I'm trying to explain is exactly what makes these types of people different.)

Anyway, its easy to say that everything works because of free markets or supply and demand, or something equally simplistic, but a lot of economic thought goes into exactly what goes on behind the scenes that makes this all work in the first place. We always say that there's this invisible hand that makes everything work because when everybody works in their own self-interest, society as a whole benefits. It's up to the economist to question this at all times and attempt to explain apparent anomalies. It's kind of like the world as a whole accepts economic principles as "binaries", but economists like the author of this article, myself, and many others are attempting to delve into the "source code" of economic theories and principles, attempting to tweak them in order to better function in our world.