Open-source software (OSS) is a good example of what a free market can produce, even when the profit motive is not directly driving it. There are plenty of profit driven examples. Take shoes for one. There are reasonably priced shoes available for practically any use or taste. Can you imagine a government bureaucracy running all shoe design and production? How would it decide what the people need or want? Actually it would probably place very little emphasis on what the people want. There is no way it would produce hundreds of shoe styles.

Open-source roughly means that the software application is available at no direct cost and that the user has access to and the right to modify the source code in order to customize the behavior of the software. Widely used examples of OSS are the Linux operating system for personal computers, the OpenOffice productivity suite, the Firefox browser and the WordPress blogging platform. All of these were produced by people from around the world freely choosing to contribute their time, knowledge and skills to the effort. Generally they do it without pay but some do eventually profit indirectly from their association with the development project.

Some argue that the development of OSS is a socialistic enterprise, but I think it is more of a charitable effort. No government mandates what is developed or how it is developed.

OSS developers are subject to the same market forces as commercial software developers. Its success is determined by the consumers of software products. If they like it they will use it; if they don't they won't. If they prefer a commercial product to OSS they will use the commercial product. This is demonstrated by the fact that the number of users of the Microsoft Windows operating system far outstrip the number of users of the free open-source Linux operating system. Nevertheless Linux is a very successful product. But there are plenty of OSS products that never catch on.

I have direct experience with a government bureaucrat trying to manage the development of software. I used to develop and use software in my job with the US Department of Defense. Many years ago each branch of the military developed and used its own software for a particular common purpose, but coordinated closely with the other services. A manager decided that this apparent duplication was inefficient and that we should standardize the software across all military branches. He was right that the practice involved additional cost but he refused to give any weight to the benefits of competition between the services that was inherent in the existing practice or to the fact that the services' requirements were not identical. We argued that too much standardization can stifle innovation and damage suitability. He wanted to sacrifice effectiveness in order to save some money and exercise more stringent control. We were unable to convince him he was wrong, but were able to ignore his demands until he moved on to another job.

A free market will always produce more and better choices for the consumer, whether those choices come from commercial or charitable enterprises.