Measuring what has been invisible
Open source software underpins much of today’s technology stack, yet its value is notoriously hard to measure. A new working paper, The Value of Open Source Software, offers one of the most comprehensive attempts to quantify both supply side and demand side value for widely used open source projects. The authors estimate the cost to recreate the most widely used projects at about four point one five billion dollars, but they place the demand side replacement value at roughly eight point eight trillion dollars, a gap that highlights how much firms rely on freely available code to avoid building the same capabilities internally (Hoffmann, Nagle, and Zhou, 2024).
This is not a small scale phenomenon. The paper shows that without open source, firms would need to spend about three point five times more on software, a conclusion that reframes open source as an infrastructural public good rather than as a niche developer culture. The findings also underline a concentration effect, with a small percentage of developers creating a very large share of demand side value.
Why this matters for sustainability and resilience
The study carries immediate relevance for conversations about digital sustainability. When we think about sustainability, we often focus on energy, materials, and carbon. Those dimensions remain crucial, but the paper reminds us that digital sustainability also includes economic resilience and the stewardship of shared resources. If open source provides trillions in implicit value, then under investing in its maintenance poses systemic risks. Broken maintainership, fragmented funding models, or unexpected loss of key contributors could produce large negative externalities for many firms and services that rely on that code.
In practical terms, a collapse or weakening of critical open source projects would not simply be a technical inconvenience. It could force private and public organisations to divert huge budgets to re development, slow innovation, and reduce the agility of digital services. That translates into economic and social costs, and into a fragile digital foundation that is less compatible with long term sustainability goals.
Policy and business responses to an undercounted public good
The paper’s demand side calculations strengthen the case for policy interventions and funding models that treat open source as infrastructure worthy of public support. Several responses follow naturally from the findings. First, firms that benefit from open source should consider more collective contributions, through funding, sponsoring maintainers, or allocating engineering time to core projects. Second, governments and institutions should evaluate grant based or procurement linked funding mechanisms, to stabilise the maintenance of components that are widely used but poorly resourced. Finally, standard setting bodies and large platforms can play a role in transparency, by cataloguing critical dependencies and by reporting on supply chain resilience.
These steps will not eliminate the need for private innovation, but they can help rebalance incentives, so that the benefits that accrue widely do not depend entirely on precarious, voluntary labour. For sustainability minded organisations, investing in open source health is a form of risk reduction and of stewardship, not merely philanthropy.
What sustainability advocates should take away
For the digital sustainability community, the paper offers a concrete change of emphasis. Protecting energy efficient infrastructure and reducing waste remain priorities, but those efforts should be complemented by attention to the economic commons of software. Open source maintenance is a sustainability challenge, because it affects resilience, equity, and the efficient use of resources across entire sectors.
Adopting policies that recognise the public good nature of widely used software, encouraging transparent dependency reporting, and creating funding mechanisms that lower the probability of catastrophic supply shocks are pragmatic steps the community can support. Ultimately, a sustainable digital ecosystem is one that preserves both material resources and the shared knowledge assets that make modern software possible.
Full Paper:
papers.ssrn.com