Ubuntu and the economy in crisis

[fulgencio]

Hi, I was wondering how does Ubuntu and the free software world in general would be affected if the economy were to continue (specially the american economy) with this unlucky streak.

Me and some friends were discussing this, and couldn't decide if it would have a positive or negative impact, because for one thing free software should be a lot more resistant to the market's weaknesses but many important projects are supported by donations that may decrease in the case of an economic reset.

[earthpigg]

as a general rule (with plenty of exceptions), the less money you have, the more appealing FOSS is.

[bufsabre666]

as a general rule (with plenty of exceptions), the less money you have, the more appealing FOSS is.

/me agrees

[master5o1]

When you say *especially regarding the US economy*, one can assume that donations *should* still be coming from other countries. Of course, currently the US economy can fluck the other's up too ... but at least it's never *that* bad. XD.

Canonical and several other (F)OSS companies are registered outside of the US and are theoretically less affected by the US economy (or at least not directly).


Again, that general rule is good!

[LaRoza]

It shouldn't matter much. The USA, Japan, most of Europe and probably a lot of other places are headed towards recessions (the only country I can think of that is steadily going up is India). This is natural and happens cyclically.

[Tazgecko]

I don't know, it wont effect the users that much.
But a lot of good software we used, are programed by large business, who are nice enough to let us use it for free.
Will they look to making more money?

[frup]

I think the economy is largely irrelevant.

I wrote a mini essay about my predictions but deleted it. I'm not a financial analyst so most of it was probably flawed. But I remember someone saying every year ending in 7 is bad for the economy, we've just been given an extra year this time round (1997 Asian stock crash, '87 crash etc.)

[Sealbhach]

I think sales of GNU Public Licenses will decline dramatically.:-\"


.

[etnlIcarus]

It shouldn't matter much. The USA, Japan, most of Europe and probably a lot of other places are headed towards recessions (the only country I can think of that is steadily going up is India). This is natural and happens cyclically.
I wouldn't describe the current US situation as, "cyclical", unless I were to be really cynical.


Anyway, there are a number of ways in which the economic state of a major country like the US could affect OSS. The most obvious one is the fact that most major open-source projects have corporate backing; your IBMs and Novells, etc. If these companies happen upon bad times and need to cut both costs and employees, their OSS contributions are easy targets for 'temporary' cut-backs.

Projects which don't have continued corporate backing may instead rely on venture capital, which will also be harder to come by; meaning fewer big, new projects and a slower cycle of innovation.

The other way in which a recession could impact OSS is from the hacker community; unpaid contributions would go down if a large number of people found that their personal economic survival depended on them sacrificing the spare time they had been using to contribute code. Hell, they may even have to get their net connection cut so they've got enough money to buy food.

[tdrusk]

I don't think it will matter. The people who need professional software will still buy it, those that don't want to will steal it or go open source if it suits their needs.

[LaRoza]

I wouldn't describe the current US situation as, "cyclical", unless I were to be really cynical.


It is not as bad as the recessions in the last 50 years ;)

[Tazgecko]

It is not as bad as the recessions in the last 50 years ;)

Not yet!! Give it time, we are only at the start.

I think etnlIcarus is quite correct, although the software is free, the time and effort do cost money.
Innovation will suffer.

But!! more people might just turn to Linux just because other OS's have become more expensive. You never know:confused:

[I-75]

I think this U.S. economy in crisis will affect Apple (for the worse). As far as other countries...there are already Open source mandates from the E.U. and other government entities which will (and has) greatly benefited Linux. Also I see more opportunities for those who refurbish computers with Linux and sell them at a low cost.

[etnlIcarus]

It is not as bad as the recessions in the last 50 years ;)Firstly, it's impossible to know how severe this situation is until it's run it's course. This is always the case; it's why most economists are reluctant to use the recession and depression labels until after the situation has stabalised.

Secondly, the biggest recessions to hit the US over the last 50 years bear striking similarities to the impending one: limited oil supplies and continuing, large-scale military operations. The differences here are the compounding factors of record levels of national debt; a larger number of competing world economies and two terms or reckless monetary policy and free-market fundamentalism. An arguable fourth factor is the current lack of political clout and discourse crippling the US gov't's ability to negotiate workable, responsibly policy in an effective amount of time. Current bailout plans are a great example of how not to rescue the US economy.

although the software is free, the time and effort do cost money.
I wish I could've expressed myself with that kind of concise brevity.

[lancest]

In my opinion the market for low cost netbooks is going to flourish and pickup speed in a recession. Prices will drop. Linux netbook software is improving and become more appealing to the XP loving crowd.
Open Office popularity is going to increase too.

[SunnyRabbiera]

Yeh when people are not able to afford the microsoft tax maybe it can help open source.

[snowpine]

Open Office popularity is going to increase too.

I agree; for the price of MS Office, you could feed your family for weeks...

[fulgencio]

I think two probable effects of an economic crisis could be:

-non-free software companies would fight harder to control software piracy, forcing many of the economically-depressed consumers to try free alternatives.

-hard times raises the awareness of the public, and the possibility of saving some money with free software (or saving the cost of an incredibly expensive antivirus by using linux) should make free software more tempting.

of course I don't know what I'm talking about but it seems to me that the two previous ideas heavily outdo the less important effects of the economy.

[smoker]

i think economic downturns are more likely to greater affect companies like apple and microsoft rather than free operating systems like linux. the fact is when money is tight, then that shiny new computer is either put on hold, and either the old one maybe given an upgrade, or perhaps a less expensive new machine is bought. the less expensive machine is more likely to have a free operating system :-)

[etnlIcarus]

http://blogs.computerworld.com/who_writes_linux_corporate_america

Think this article outlines pretty clearly that linux is far from immune to the current economic crisis:


Breaking it down farther, in the 2.6.24 kernel, it appears 13.9% of Linux had been written by people without a corporate backer. In the case of 12.9% of the contributors, the Linux Foundation was unable to pin point exactly who the programmers were working for. The rest, 74.2% was written by paid developers.

The top ten looks like this: Red Hat, 11.2%; Novell, 8.9%; IBM, 8.3%; Intel, 4.1%; Linux Foundation, 2.6%; independent Linux consultants, 2.5%; SGI, 2.0% MIPS Technology, 1.6%; Oracle, 1.3% and MontaVista, 1.2%. Just underneath the top ten, you'll find Google at 1.1%.

Except for MontaVista, a major embedded Linux vendor, MIPS, a powerhouse semiconductor OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and the independents, these are all major, billion dollar plus United States companies. It doesn't really sound like Linux is made in ma's basement does it?

[techmarks]

Home users will probably hold on to their hardware longer so Linux and the BSD's will look more attractive as Microsoft's OS always needs the newer hardware to run well.

At the same time corporate backers of Linux might put less money into the OS and Linux corporate development and adoption could stagnate for a while.

So maybe more home users for Linux and BSD up ahead with less innovation at the enterprise level. It really depends on how long this downturn continues.

The bailout is very problematic and the US economy will continue to suffer as there are many underlying problems in the US society that are not being addressed or even acknowledged.:confused: