Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Asparouhova

It’s cheaper to reuse existing software components than to write code from scratch, which also makes it possible for entrepreneurs to start software companies with fewer up-front costs. The entire software industry owes its financial success to leveraging this arbitrage. These benefits are passed down to software’s users, too. If software doesn’t cost much to make, developers can offer consumers more of their tools, toys, and applications at affordable prices. But software’s “zero marginal cost” property heavily favors its consumers. If software is free to consume, in terms of value accrued to the producer it is worth nothing. A developer might gain reputational benefits from creating a popular project, but those benefits are usually short-lived compared to the long-term costs of maintenance.