The Impact of Open Source: An Analysis of the Database Market

On the hackers-db mail alias today (an alias for folks working in open source databases), Lukas Smith posted a little nugget saying his research paper studying the database market and the impact of open source was done. He talks about it more in this blog.

From his introduction:

A bold statement on market evolution states: "Commoditization is something that happens to every successful industry eventually" (Murdock 2006, 91). Commoditization is the process whereby technology that was previously owned exclusively by a few vendors, and therefore priced at a premium, becomes widely available at comparatively low prices. Due to its open nature, open source software could likely be a critical factor in facilitating this development. This paper aims at examining to what extend this statements holds true within the software market and more specifically the RDBMS software market. But more importantly, the purpose of this paper is to study how individuals and companies can leverage open source in mature markets.

Definitely worth a look-see.