This section features background information and resources relevant to the current research theme. It includes resources produced by WDR and external sources and is organised by regions and topics. An archive of resources recommended in previous research cycles is also available along with news from the WDR/Intelecon Regulatory News Service.
License fees and GDP per capita Print E-mail
Written by Sylvia Cadena   
Wednesday, 29 June 2005
This paper, produced by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, describes three reasons why there is a strong case for free and open source software being deployed widely in developing countries.

The author explores the 3 ideas: 1) that free software is a skills enabling platform; 2) it is far cheaper; 3) and it is more adaptable to local needs.

The free software development community provides an environment of intensive interactive skills development at little explicit cost, which is particularly useful for local development of skills, especially in economically disadvantaged regions. Meanwhile, the controversy over total costs of ownership (TCO) of free vs. proprietary software is not applicable to developing countries and other regions with low labour costs, where the TCO advantage lies with free software, and the share of licence fees in TCO is much higher than in (richer) high labour cost countries.

The paper concludes with a table comparing license fees for proprietary software against GDP per capita for 176 countries.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is Programme Leader, FLOSS, at MERIT/Infonomics, University of Maastricht, Netherlands.

The paper is fully available at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/index.html

* First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peer–reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet.