[BenoitEssiambre]

The problem of investment in the world of open source software is a difficult one. What company wants to pay for improvements when they know competitors are going to get all the benefits of these investments too. It's one of these bad equilibrium, prisoner's dilemma, kind of situation.

In practice, the funding often comes from those people or companies that more urgently need the improvements or those that are pushed by end users who are willing to pay a premium to avoid lock-in. There is a longer tail of users who free ride and pay nothing for improvements.

Even businesses that support open source, at any moment in the future, have strong incentives to use network effects to steer their customers into more subjugated positions and adopt proprietary non standard or non open systems, or to sell themselves to businesses that will do that.

The coagulation of tech companies in a few large players is a sign that this may be happening right now.

I wonder if there are ways to promote wider investment in open source and open standards technology that benefit more people and get us into better economic Nash equilibria.