[wos] Muenster Economics Studies on Open Source

[Volker Grassmuck]

On 12 Dec 2003 at 15:24, Armin Medosch wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> was at a conference yesterday in brussels called crosstalks which 
> meant to  stimulate a dialogue between the proprietary and open 
> source model. there was a representative from microsoft. in his talk 
> he quoted both the muenster study and another study done by 
> University of Klagenfurt in austria (btw. thats also where haider is 
> local governor). afterwards i approached him and asked him directly if 
> microsoft had financed those studies. he said that microsoft had 
> funded the study that was behind the muenster report - so no 
> investigative journalism needed here - but maintained that the 
> klagenfurt thing was independent (whatever that means). 

aha, well, that's nice of MS to admit it, but the Muenster study 
itself doesn't mention any financial support by MS. Mh, academics for 
hire who will "scientifically prove" what their sponsors want to 
hear!?
 
> apart from that there was a quite interesting presentation by the 
> director of the ICT   department of the federal government of belgium, 
> a mr. strickxx who seems to be doing a lot for open source in his 
> department. very pragmatic of course and appearently he was a Sun 
> man for 10 years before moving into government service. if there is 
> any interest in getting in contact with him i can dig out his name card.

Sure, that would be for free software in e-government, I guess? Do 
you remember any of the projects they're working on?

BTW, will you be there for the wos workshop at 20C3 on Dec. 29? It 
would be nice to have all the topic maintainers give a short 
presentation on where their panel is going. 

best
Volker


> best
> armin
> 
> 
> 
> On 10 Dec 03, at 22:58, Volker Grassmuck wrote:
> 
> > Hi Rishab, hi Georg,
> > 
> > two studies from the Muenster Institute for Computational Economics 
> > (MICE !) are making waves these days that no doubt have already 
> > reached you. One is what seems to me a quite refined version of the 
> > "the monetized market is the most efficient mechanism for serving 
> > 'customer sovereignty'" rant. [1] The other poses Microsoft not a 
> > monopoly but as an enabler for a wide variety of idependent economic 
> > activity. [2]
> > 
> > This is part of a major roll-back and has to be refuted with the 
> > highest authority in economics that the free software can muster. And 
> > a clear statement from the free software industries. And maybe some 
> > investigative journalism unveiling that this stuff is paid for by MS.
> >  
> > What can we do about that? Who could write a counter-study?
> > 
> > best
> > Volker
> > 
> > 
> > [1] Open-Source Software: An Economic Assessment
> > http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/mers4-OpenSource_en.pdf
> > http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/mers4-OpenSource_de.pdf
> > 
> > [2] The Impact of Microsoft Deutschland GmbH on the German IT Sector
> > http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/mers3-EconomicImpact_en.pdf
> > http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/mers3-EconomicImpact_de.pdf
> > 
> > 
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