Financial meltdowns force people to think, sometimes too much. Consider Andrew Keen’s post “Economy to Give Open-Source a Good Thumping“, in which he speculates that:
The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some “back end” revenue. “Free” doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.
Since people contributing to open-source projects and online communities have not (unless paid to do so) been paid to do so, thinking that they’ll stop just because they have potentially more time on their hands doesn’t make much sense. Contributors to free stuff usually do it for reasons other than money.
On the other side of the argument, Nat Torkington and others have stated that the recession will be good for open-source projects, because their lower costs make them more attractive to deploy. I bet that anyone who has been waiting for a recession as an excuse to lower their costs has bigger problems than whether or not to deploy open-source software. If you’re still scared of open-source software, a recession probably won’t change your opinion.
Recesssions are part of the normal business cycle, painful as they are. Open source on the other hand is not part of the business cycle. Open source accelerates the pace at which technology moves from new and expensive and risky to mature and commoditized and safe. It is a catalyst for the normal pattern of technology diffusion in a market economy. And even though catalysts have a powerful impact, they don’t themselves get “used up” in the reaction they catalyze.
Will the recession kill the open-source development model and crowdsourced projects? Will it spur greater success for open-source initiatives? The recession may influence success or failure of individual projects, but open source development will be around in boom times or busts, unless and until someone imagines an even stronger catalyst for the software technology life cycle.