Open source economy

From the beginning of computer history, people were researching abilities of the machines. Software is a way to turn these highly technological chips and schemes into something useful, something that can help you with your work, bring joy and enrich knowledge with-in your area of interest.

In 80’s thousands of people around the globe were working to produce software for all purposes: naturally operating systems, drivers for additional devices, office tools, games and many other useful utilities. That time developer was king and god, his word was the law. Software was written according to his understanding, and end users were only to choose between very few similar packages – which one to pay for.

Since 1993, a year when first Linux OS was born, situation begins to change. Software giants finally turn their sight on home consumer market, Internet is opened its doors for many countries, for all people.

Decade later, we can observe extremely large growth rate of open source community. And if in the end of 90’s, their software was mostly crafted for each developer individual needs, now days nearly each open source OS supports waste amount of hardware. Free software is getting polished, as well as the ways of its delivery.

Today you can setup either one of popular “linices”, being sure that it will work from the start, and will contain applications for everyday use.

There are still some problems with drivers licensing, intersystem compatibility issues (mostly due to difference between open source and closed source standards), and a number of unpolished software. However the situation is very temporal, especially since open source software has finally reached embedded systems, such as merchant machines and cellular phones.

Mobile market is filled with flavors of Linux, starting with Android and ending with Maemo. Most enthusiastic people, even provide their guides on installing casual Linux distributions onto mobile devices.

In such situation, where the word “open” have literally captured the world, and masses of people choose to associate themselves with open source world, electing free tools to expensive commercial alternatives, what does still prevent Linux to prevail? Answer, ironically, is open economy.

Let us examine a country with very high online presence and really developed software market – United States. Doctrine of open economy there dictates “the more you spend, the less taxes you pay”, since tax payment system is based on principle: profit minus expenses.

In other words, when you decide to spend thousands of dollars from your budget on products of some known commercial brand, such as Microsoft, those money are being deducted in your income declaration, and you get the profit.

But suppose you’ve decided to replace expensive, potentially dangerous (since it is most targeted market by virus writers, and since no code is available for wide audience review, hence severe possibilities of misuse exist) and usually overwhelming commercial software, with modern, open source, easy to use and free software.

You don’t pay for it, hence, there are no expenses, and since there are no expenses, there is nothing to deduct from your tax income statement. Which in country with open economy, results in that you should pay more taxes.

Since businessmen prefer to increase their profits, and decrease amount of taxes, they do choose commercial software. Yes, it is bulky, it is buggy, it is expensive – but in the end, it seems cheaper.

If you look at economical map of the world, you will see that U.S. is not the only country following such cunning tax payment system. In fact, any country with “open economy” suffers from the same issue. But in Europe it is slightly different.

Countries like Germany or France with constant immigration flow, and immense economical pressure imposed by European Union, financing other, less successful countries with-in it have begun to understand that “enough is enough”. That if you can economize on something, without over imposing taxes on business, it’s better to do it. Business will work better, and end line revenue will increase.

Apart from business as it is, they do promote the idea of free software in the state institutions, ensuring bright future for open source software Europe.

Perhaps, movement toward open source community will transform tax system of open economy world, and we’ll be able to observe fair competition between the two markets. But for some countries, it still seems to be far perspective.