Over the weekend I came across a great book (via Hacker News – where else) being given away for free from O’Reilly media called The Software Paradox.
I always used to recommend Eric Raymond’s excellent, but slightly geek oriented, The Cathedral and the Bazaar to people who asked me about why companies would ever invest in open source software when they would get no direct monetary benefit from said software via licensing fees.
Now I can recommend a new book, The Software Paradox. It gives an excellent historical overview of how people have perceived the value of software and how this perception has changed over time. Why were IBM so relaxed about letting a new company, Microsoft, own the intellectual property of the operating system that powered the IBM PCs allowing Microsoft to eclipse IBM in value in less than 10 years? And after making so much money from selling Windows, why is Microsoft now giving it away for free?
The Software Paradox also discusses case studies from various different companies from well known names such as Microsoft and IBM to lesser known (but sexier) players like Atlassian.
I’m personally not so sure the software market has decreased as much in value as the book contends. Software as a service is still a big and growing business. But the book is a very enjoyable read nonetheless.