What’s a surprisingly impactful investment for the economy?

In 2018, The European Commission released a breathtaking report on the impact of open-source software and hardware on the EU Economy.

The study found that European Union companies invested 1 € billion in open-source software. This investment in open source software was estimated to contribute between €60 to €95 billion to the European Union’s GDP.

These results mean open-source investments are a lever that multiplies value across society by 60 to 95 times! I don’t know many investments that deliver this kind of value.

How is it possible?

When you compare open and closed software organizations, the open alternatives have a more significant impact on their ecosystems because they give more freedom of action to their users and increase their productivity.

WordPress created a more extensive ecosystem than Blogger because it allows anyone to build, remix, install and maintain it. WordPress is now worth over $7bn, enabling other developers to make over $140 bn in revenues.

Odoo, an open-source ERP is doing the same to compete with SAP.

RISC-V is an open-source chip architecture that’s helping its market double in size year after year. In 2018 its market was around $50mn and is expected to grow to $1bn in 2024.

A tool to accelerate the impact of our digital, health, and climate transformations

Imagine the impact of extending these investments beyond supporting open-source software. What would happen if we supported the same types of investments in open hardware, open design, open science, open data, open health, or open culture?

This would reduce the costs of ownership and training to enable new opportunities for everyone and weaken monopoly powers.

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