Free and Open Source cannot get basic economics correct

Before you rev up those keyboards, and shoot off a snarky comment- consider this statement- there are many ways to run (and ruin economies). But they still have not found a replacement for money. Yes Happiness is important. Search Engine is good.

So unless they start a new branch of economics with lots more motivational theory and psychology and lot less quant especially for open source projects, money ,revenue, sales is the only true measure of success in enterprise software. Particularly if you have competitors who are making more money selling the same class of software.

Popularity contests are for high school quarterbacks —so even if your open source software is popular in downloads, email discussions, stack overflow or Reddit Karma, in a million nay billion dollar stakes business,

any company evangelizing open source without keeping a count or pretending not to care about the M Money thing is deluding its own community of students, teachers , contributors and hobbyists into committing wastage of precious time.

Coders like the rest of humanity have 24 hours to spend, sleep,eat and be with family and code. To evangelize without eventual monetization a particular software to (mostly) young people is the same as 1960s hippies promising free love but not free drugs to youngsters.

I therefore think philosophies code without the money is wrong, just as I like JBoss as a case study http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/lessons-from-leaders/jboss-example/ and Red Hat ‘s value creation for investors at 9.1 billion USD ( see Red Hat, Inc. – Stock Information http://bit.ly/dLFEfc or http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=RHT).

I am not sure whether to laugh or cry out on the wow open software that unsuspecting students, investors and developers are led down the garden path by anyone promising spiritual nirvana without the money. If you cant measure it, it probably isnt worth measuring.

Accordingly I disagree with the sentiments but not the maths at http://maxschireson.com/2011/04/22/measuring-the-success-of-open-source-projects-a-case-study-around-mongodb/ and http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/comparing-open-source-and-proprietary-software-markets/ or

http://www.r-statistics.com/2010/09/open-source-and-money-%E2%80%93-why-paying-r-developers-might-not-always-help-the-project/

Money cant buy you love but

food stamps and Reddit Karma wont buy diapers either.