OPEN SOURCE ECONOMICS

There would be four types of participants.

Users, would commonly be the customer or client in a traditional business.

Programmers, the technical side of the application.

Marketing, or the people that would be engaged in promotion and sale of products and services.

Administrators would administer the enterprise its management and accounting.

The inherit freedom that is at the foundation of open source would be central to this enterprise, anyone can participate. The unique aspect of this idea is that participation would come with a proportionate share of the income generated by the business. With the ultimate governor of these transactions being the participating community itself.

In free market supply and demand economics we generally accept greed or self interest as the invisible hand that regulates the market. In this particular scenario it is a somewhat similar dynamic that regulates the price of the services or products and the wages given to the technical, marketing and administrative side of the participating community. The difference is that their is an initial requirement to give something for free fist. The more you can give the more value generated, and the larger the proportion you have in the income that is generated.

I have found two particular differences with a business modeled after open source to the current business model.

1. The initial capital to start a project is given away. It is in the form of the free script given by a programmer, or the efforts and time given by the marketing and administrative staff. The common employee employer relationship is converted to the investor and return on investment paradigm we commonly understand today.

It is only after the initial investment of time or money that participants may hope to see a return from their labor.

2. The consumer of the products or services would have an equal share in the decision process. Equilibrium of cost, price or value would ultimately be established through a quorum of all participants consumers as well as producers and administrators.

The success or failure of an open source enterprise would rely ultimately in how equitable it behaves to its producers, employees and consumers. In other words an organization that is able to provide the greatest level of fairness or value to all concerned would attract more customers, the best developers, administrators, and marketing personnel.

This organization would be in the software business. The product line would be cloud based systems, their development, maintenance, distribution and training of their use.

At the core of the product or service is a Linux system, with an integrated browser, running Drupal in a MySQL database. From these basic elements a variety of products can be configured and marketed.

Complex accounting ERP systems, ecommerce applications, cloud based synchronized PC applications, all the way to server based security systems and personal robotics. There is currently enough open source technology to make almost any application imaginable.

It is understood that technology works best if it can be sold and converted to food on the table. For this reason sales and marketing would take advantage of what open source is best known for, social media.

For marketing and distribution, local Drupal sites would provide news, promote local economies, provide local training, education as well as employment.

The value of a company such as this is in the quality of the community on which it is built. For this reason as a company it would need to keep accounting and management as open as possible.