Free software most surely provides some freedoms that are of an economic nature. This essay seeks to draw out some of the economic implications of free software. It does not provide a comprehensive analysis, but rather seeks to encourage people to think about the issues. I would argue that the crucial economic freedom that free software, and the GNU General Public License in particular, provides is that of the rejection of licensing costs. It is interesting that the Open Source Definition presents the rejection of licensing costs as the very first point.
Free software requires no costs to track the distribution and use of software licenses.
These secondary costs to track the use of software licenses can be quite substantial, particularly in the presence of redistribution. And the costs associated with licensing Internet-oriented server software can be quite outrageous. The key economic insight in the denial of licensing charges is in its recognition that once costs have been incurred to produce software, the costs are properly treated as sunk costs that can thereafter be ignored for decision-making purposes. If the producer of the software doesn't need to consider the sunk costs for decisionmaking purposes, it sure is nice when its release as free software results in the users not needing to consider those costs either.