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EU’s FOSS Study on Boing Boing

The famous study of open source software just published by the EU has made its rounds to all the major tech sites. Even Boing Boing picks it up.

I’ll quote their summary:

Rishab Ayer Gosh has led an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers through an enormous study of Free/Open Source Software. The paper, called “Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU,” runs to 287 pages. It exhaustively documents the way that Free/Open technologies dominate information technology and describes who actually writes Free/Open software. It also talks about what it would cost to replicate the benefits of Free/Open software through proprietary development (EU12 billion!), how many person years that would take (131,000!), and projects the total size of the Free/Open market in the years to come.”

This study may be a watershed in the digital tipping point toward open source software that we all know is coming.

Edit: InformationWeek reports on the study, and pulls this valuable quote:

“Gorman insists the open source software makes economic sense. “It’s a very good business model for entering large, existing markets and taking significant share, and creating significant customer and investor value,” he said. “If you’re an incumbent competing with a new company that’s an open source company, it’s very difficult to adjust or change your business model to be competitive. Usually by the time they end up adjusting, it’s too late.”

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