Motivation for Open

From Karien Bezuidenhuit, COO of Shuttleworth Foundation:

This blog entry on the economics of open was written for open ed week -- http://edtechfrontier.com/2012/03/04/the-economics-of-open/ -- Amber Thomas of JISC retweeted it. It is quite long, but if you skim ahead, the bolded "answers" starting about half way through are useful.

See -- Open enables rapid market entry, market penetration, and market share.

• Open generates revenue through advertising, subscriptions, memberships, and donations.
• Open generates revenue through services.
• Open generates revenue through direct and indirect sales
• Open Generates Innovation
• Open Makes Better Use of What We Already Have
• Open works don’t end, they expand and evolve on and on through others.

He gives examples of each of these in practice for open content, but similar examples would be interesting for a range of open fields.