[wos] Re: Muenster Economics Studies on Open Source

[Rishab Aiyer Ghosh]

discrediting this on the basis of investigative journalism to find out 
who's paid for it is the best in the short term.

[1] is amazingly political, has references to a very narrow literature and 
simply wrong in many cases (e.g. the argument that standards are better 
served by commercial entities ignores years of literature in various fields 
- legal, economic, policy, technology - on standards and the 
importance/utility of open standards). the entire first part - that prima 
facie, open source must be inefficient because it is not based on a priced 
market - is easily refuted - e.g .by benkler's "coases penguin".

i did not see anything in this that was particularly different from, say, 
evans (NERA) as regards to competition, market failure and govt policy. 
with regards to the inherent (in)efficiency of the development model, this 
paper has only polemics with no empirical evidence either way, and there is 
much work theoretical and empirical available to counter that.

[2] is a bit different, in that it is not necessarily wrong at all. but it 
implies that the IT industry which _happens_ to be based on Microsoft 
(since microsoft dominates it through a monopoly platform) would disappear 
without MS, rather than move on to other platforms. it has clearly been 
based on lots of information and cooperation from MS, presumably also their 
funding.

i wonder how the people in munich, or the interior ministry (barbara held 
etc) are reacting to this, if at all.

best,
-rishab

At 22:58 10/12/2003 +0100, 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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