The benefits of clubbing aren't just available to the nation's youth, and at weekends. It is a highly sociable, health promoting activity, which we could all do more.
At the club I belong to, other clubbers have even reported experiencing occasional bouts of euphoria, which they've put down to the free or open license on the source.
You see, for these clubbers, the vibe doesn't come from the techno, but from the technical: software systems that support various processes, like contact relationship management, project management, publishing, or financial management. Processes for which system support in the form of computer software is essential, if the mundane and mechanical are to be automated, and potential increases in productivity realised.
These clubbers aren't ravers either. They're workers within organisations, much like yours or mine, only organised to share software systems and practices, so that the processes they have in common might be strengthened.
To be able to share computer software systems is not, as a typical consumer might first think, a consequence of corporate generosity. It is actually something quite natural to software, until a vendor prohibits sharing with a restrictive product license.
Unlike the bar-stools and bottled beer in a night-spot, a computer programme can be consumed by one person without affecting the consumption of another, supply to one person allows supply of an identical quality good to another, and there are no naturally occurring mechanisms of exclusion. Software has all the classic characteristics of a public good.
The freedom to use, modify, and share software is protected by a Free Software, or more popularly named, Open Source Software license.
Its effect is to safeguard individual investments in multi-stakeholder software development projects, and to ensure that returns on those investments are reciprocal. Your return on the investments of others - in the form of improved software - is guaranteed.
The potential win-win benefits to be derived from positive externalities make the collective provision of Free Software a highly attractive proposition to organisations seeking to maximise their return on investment.
The concept is simple: the software needs of some groups are similar, Free Software license code can be re-used, the cost of producing the systems can be shared.
Consider for a moment the current total expenditure of the UK voluntary and social enterprise sectors on proprietary computer software. A difficult task because we don't know the size of the UK's social economy [1], or the proportion of the UK software market it accounts for [2], but if we extrapolate from the NCVO Voluntary Sector Almanac [3], and the Johns Hopkins survey of global civil society [4], we can guess that there are roughly 800,000 paid workers within the UK social economy. If, at conservative estimates, each organisation spends £200 per worker each year [5], on software licenses and software system development, that makes a total outlay for the sector of around £160 million.
Put another way, for the voluntary sector alone (for whom data is more reliable) software costs are about 10 percent of the sector's operational budget for management and administration.
That's £160 million, and growing, spent on software that is illegal to share for use by others, can't be modified to suit a particular purpose (you might have bought the product, but you don't have right to change it), and from which no positive externalities can be derived.
Given that the profit margins of the UK's largest software vendor approach 90 percent [6], it is sobering to realise that since free alternatives exist, the wealth of the UK's social economy is ultimately being drained.
So why aren't more social enterprises using Free Software [7]? Well firstly, anyone who uses the Internet already does, and people would probably use Free Software more widely if they knew more about it. I'm writing this article using OpenOffice.org, a Free Software equivalent to Microsoft Office TM, which runs on Windows TM , and costs nothing to download and use.
Secondly, whilst Free Software bears no license costs, the total cost of ownership is rarely going to be zero, as in the case above. Where the costs are thought to be similar, managers have tended to reject Free Software in favour of better known, proprietary, alternatives.
In the absence of an economic club, hiring a firm of software developers to deliver a mission critical system (after consulting, training and support) is going to be costly, Free Software license or not - although no license fees will inevitably reduce the bill.
Managers who know Free Software use it because it is proven to be technically superior, more compatible with other programmes, and to carry a lesser risk of dependence upon a single service provider.
So let's take advantage of the Free Software opportunity, and at the same time increase our returns on investment, by providing our software systems collectively. Talk to your partner and neighbouring organisations, find-out where your needs overlap, and talk to those developers and providers of Free Software systems and services who recognise the advantages of software clubs.
Are you dancing? There's £160 million that could be put to better use.
An Article by Jon Taylor
Appropriate Software Foundation
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[1] The DTI's mapping of the social economy is eagerly awaited. See http://www.dti.gov.uk/socialenterprise/baseline.htm
[2] The granularity of data presented in UK software market reports just isn't fine enough. See http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/34789/34789.htm
[3] Source: The UK Voluntary Sector Almanac, 2004, NCVO
[4] Global Civil Society: An Overview, 2003, L. Salamon, S. Sokolowski, and R. List, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies
[5] Based upon anecdotal evidence from a small survey of finance directors within voluntary organisations.
[6] Microsoft's profit margin on sales of the Windows operating system is reported as being 86 percent. See http://www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_711827.html?menu=
[7] the current level of Free Software usage within the UK is unknown, but is described in the UK Office of Government Commerce report, 'Open Source Software: Guidance on Implementing UK Government Policy' as being 'patchy at best', outside of the web-server market. See http://www.ogc.gov.uk/embedded_object.asp?docid=2498
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