OStatic

We all know there are plenty of reasons to be in favor of open source software. It increases personal freedom, it helps people become better developers by sharing in the advances made by others, it provides many eyes to find bugs, it can respond more quickly to changing market demands, and so on. But what about reasons for corporations to get involved? For publicly-traded corporations, the bottom line comes down to one thing: does getting involved with open source software help the stock price?

A new study reported in the Wall Street Journal tries to answer that question with some historical analysis. The author, Oliver Alexy, dug for press releases from publicly-traded companies that announced they were making previously-proprietary products open source. After eliminating announcements that had other substantial content, he was left with a pool of 38 announcements from 30 companies. Then he took a look at the stock price on the days surrounding the announcements.

The results? Announcing an open source transition gave an average 1.6% boost to the stock price - if the company also "clearly communicated a short-term revenue model." Just saying you're going open source without concrete plans to make money resulted in a 1.6% stock drop on the average.

We should be careful not to overanalyze these results; 38 announcements spread over nearly a decade is not a large pool, and 2% stock swings are not that uncommon. But it looks like this study confirms something open source proponents would like to believe: that investors are just as confident in open source as in closed source, as long as you can show them the money. Now it's up to us to deliver.

• stock market