Putting a Value on Openness

Matt Asay of Alfresco blogs at CNet about a very interesting paper – Putting a Value on Openness: The Effect of Product Source Code Releases on the Market Value of Firms – by Oliver Alexy of Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) Business School.  Alexy’s paper evaluates how Wall Street has reacted to firms who have announced open sourcing of their software and how that has affected the company’s value over the past 8 years.  Alexy also looks at whether the street values open source more as a cost-cutting tool than as a competitive advantage and decides that it is the former than the latter.  Tim Lee adds his take at Techdirt.