Have you ever wondered why companies like IBM tend to use open source in their solutions and even pay developers to write software that’s given away for free? An article by Dirk Riehle entitled The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder Perspectives may answer some of your questions.
The article will be most interesting to those with a basic understanding of microeconomics (like the knowledge gained from Waterloo’s ECON 101). However, I’m sure you’ll still find it valuable if you’ve never seen a demand curve before. If you’re interested, you can read up on demand curves at Wikipedia’s page on supply and demand.
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