Development costs of open source software

<p> Developing code takes time, and therefore its costs can always be measured, at least, as <a class="wikilink" href="/opportunity_cost/"> opportunity cost </a> . Without focusing on code ( <a class="wikilink" href="/open_source/"> open source </a> or not) financed by companies, the costs of development are normally absorbed by individuals. It may start as a simple plugin for a larger platform, a cool command line tool. This is a short snippet from cURL history (released for the first time in 1997): </p> <blockquote cite="https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2015/03/20/curl-17-years-old-today/" class="quoteback" darkmode="" data-author="" data-title="curl%2C%2017%20years%20old%20today%20%7C%20daniel.haxx.se"> Today, I am employed by my forth company during curl’s life time: <strong> Mozilla </strong> . All through this project’s lifetime, I’ve kept my work situation separate and I believe I haven’t allowed it to disturb our project too much. Mozilla is however the first one that actually allows me to spend a part of my time on curl and still get paid for it! <footer> <cite> <a href="https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2015/03/20/curl-17-years-old-today/"> Daniel Stenberg </a> </cite> </footer> </blockquote> <script note="" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/Blogger-Peer-Review/quotebacks@1/quoteback.js"> </script> <p> However, developing open-source code can have an intrinsic value for the creator(s) since it becomes a way of making a name for themselves. In the same way that you can <a class="wikilink" href="/grow_your_online_persona_with_smart_performative_blogging/"> grow your online persona with smart performative blogging </a> , you can achieve something similar through releasing code, whatever you feel more comfortable doing, sometimes even both. </p> <p> I also believe there is another possibility, which relates to the joy of contributing. If I can make a tool perform better, or provide some <strong> value </strong> to a group of people, then why not just go ahead and do it. The biggest difference with other products, is that software has a virtually zero <a class="wikilink" href="/marginal_cost/"> marginal cost </a> for the developer, which makes it easy to scale. On the other hand, <a class="wikilink" href="/maintenance_costs_of_open_source_projects/"> Maintenance costs of open source projects </a> are often undervalued. </p> <p> To think: </p> <ul> <li> Why <a class="wikilink" href="/open_source_is_associated_with_free/"> open source is associated with free </a> ? </li> <li> Are there examples of <a class="wikilink" href="/free_but_not_open_source_software/"> Free but not open source software </a> that actually built a community? </li> </ul> <p> Tags: <a href="/tags/Open-Source"> #Open-Source </a> <a href="/tags/software"> #software </a> <a href="/tags/business-models"> #business-models </a> </p>