IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/iepoli/v21y2009i3p229-244.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pragmatism, not ideology: Historical perspectives on IBM's adoption of open-source software

Author

Listed:
  • Campbell-Kelly, Martin
  • Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D.

Abstract

We track IBM's approach to software production and commercialization between 1950 and the present. We find that in the 1950s IBM followed what today would be called an open-source model - its software source code was open, free of charge, and written collaboratively with its users. By the mid 1980s, all of these attributes had been reversed - IBM's software was closed source, sold or leased independently of hardware sales, and written without the collaboration of its users. More recently, the company has been in a state of transition, achieving a balance between free, open-source software and proprietary software that still generates 20% of its revenues. We interpret these radical swings in light of the substantial changes that have taken place since the 1950s in the costs and benefits of open source, bundled, and collaborative software vis-à-vis the alternatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell-Kelly, Martin & Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D., 2009. "Pragmatism, not ideology: Historical perspectives on IBM's adoption of open-source software," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 229-244, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:21:y:2009:i:3:p:229-244
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-6245(09)00020-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Josh Lerner, 2005. "The Scope of Open Source Licensing," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 20-56, April.
    2. Josh Lerner & Jean Triole, 2000. "The Simple Economics of Open Source," NBER Working Papers 7600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Lerner, Josh & Tirole, Jean, 2001. "The open source movement: Key research questions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 819-826, May.
    4. West, Joel, 2003. "How open is open enough?: Melding proprietary and open source platform strategies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1259-1285, July.
    5. Farrell, Joseph & Weiser, Philip J., 2003. "Modularity, Vertical Integration, and Open Access Policies: Towards a Convergence of Antitrust and Regulation in the Internet Age," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt4dh7q2dd, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Annabelle Gawer & Rebecca Henderson, 2007. "Platform Owner Entry and Innovation in Complementary Markets: Evidence from Intel," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 1-34, March.
    7. Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 990-1029, June.
    8. Farrell, Joseph & Klemperer, Paul, 2007. "Coordination and Lock-In: Competition with Switching Costs and Network Effects," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1967-2072, Elsevier.
    9. Michael L. Katz & Carl Shapiro, 1994. "Systems Competition and Network Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 93-115, Spring.
    10. David S. Evans & Richard Schmalensee, 2005. "The Industrial Organization of Markets with Two-Sided Platforms," NBER Working Papers 11603, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Richard N. Langlois, 1999. "Modularity in Technology, Organization, and Society," Working papers 1999-05, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    12. Stanley M. Besen & Joseph Farrell, 1994. "Choosing How to Compete: Strategies and Tactics in Standardization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 117-131, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    2. Garcia-Swartz, Daniel D. & Campbell-Kelly, Martin, 2019. "Openness as a business strategy: Historical perspectives on openness in computing and mobile phones," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 1-14.
    3. Harkonen, Janne & Haapasalo, Harri & Hanninen, Kai, 2015. "Productisation: A review and research agenda," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 65-82.
    4. Maha Shaikh & Emmanuelle Vaast, 2016. "Folding and Unfolding: Balancing Openness and Transparency in Open Source Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 813-833, December.
    5. Sebastian von Engelhardt, 2011. "What Economists Know about Open Source Software - Its Basic Principles and Research Results," Jena Economics Research Papers 2011-005, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    6. Wen Wen & Marco Ceccagnoli & Chris Forman, 2016. "Opening Up Intellectual Property Strategy: Implications for Open Source Software Entry by Start-up Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(9), pages 2668-2691, September.
    7. Menéndez-Caravaca, Eloísa & Bueno, Salvador & Gallego, M. Dolores, 2021. "Exploring the link between free and open source software and the collaborative economy: A Delphi-based scenario for the year 2025," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    8. Wen Wen & Marco Ceccagnoli & Chris Forman, 2013. "Patent Commons, Thickets, and Open Source Software Entry by Start-Up Firms," NBER Working Papers 19394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Stefano Colombo & Luca Grilli & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2014. "Network Externalities, Incumbent’s Competitive Advantage and the Degree of Openness of Software Start-Ups," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 44(2), pages 175-200, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Powell, J.P., 2010. "The limits of economic self-interest : The case of open source software," Other publications TiSEM fc6d2aa1-8b29-40be-b888-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Hussinger, Katrin & Schwiebacher, Franz, 2013. "The value of disclosing IPR to open standard setting organizations," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-060, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Kevin Boudreau, 2010. "Open Platform Strategies and Innovation: Granting Access vs. Devolving Control," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(10), pages 1849-1872, October.
    4. Kevin J. Boudreau & Andrei Hagiu, 2009. "Platform Rules: Multi-Sided Platforms as Regulators," Chapters, in: Annabelle Gawer (ed.), Platforms, Markets and Innovation, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Burcu Tan & Edward G. Anderson, Jr. & Geoffrey G. Parker, 2020. "Platform Pricing and Investment to Drive Third-Party Value Creation in Two-Sided Networks," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 217-239, March.
    6. Jabbour, Chady & Rey-Valette, Hélène & Maurel, Pierre & Salles, Jean-Michel, 2019. "Spatial data infrastructure management: A two-sided market approach for strategic reflections," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 69-82.
    7. Jens Foerderer, 2020. "Interfirm Exchange and Innovation in Platform Ecosystems: Evidence from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4772-4787, October.
    8. Rodolphe Durand & Robert M. Grant & Tammy L. Madsen & David P. McIntyre & Arati Srinivasan, 2017. "Networks, platforms, and strategy: Emerging views and next steps," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 141-160, January.
    9. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899.
    10. Narayanan, V.K. & Chen, Tianxu, 2012. "Research on technology standards: Accomplishment and challenges," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(8), pages 1375-1406.
    11. Oke Chr. Beckmann & Susanne Royer, 2016. "Business Models and the Impact of Different Market Contexts: Towards an analytical framework for researchers and practitioners," Danish-German Working Papers 005, Europa-Universität Flensburg, International Institute of Management (IIM);University of Southern Denmark, Department of Border Region Studies (IFG).
    12. David S. Evans & Richard Schmalensee, 2013. "The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses," NBER Working Papers 18783, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Gauguier, Jean-Jacques, 2009. "L’industrialisation de l’Open Source," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/4388 edited by Toledano, Joëlle.
    14. Pinar Ozcan & Filipe M. Santos, 2015. "The market that never was: Turf wars and failed alliances in mobile payments," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(10), pages 1486-1512, October.
    15. Rahul Basole & Jürgen Karla, 2011. "On the Evolution of Mobile Platform Ecosystem Structure and Strategy," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 3(5), pages 313-322, October.
    16. Jens Foerderer & Thomas Kude & Sunil Mithas & Armin Heinzl, 2018. "Does Platform Owner’s Entry Crowd Out Innovation? Evidence from Google Photos," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(2), pages 444-460, June.
    17. A. Yalta & A. Yalta, 2010. "Should Economists Use Open Source Software for Doing Research?," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 371-394, April.
    18. Matteucci, Nicola, 2013. "Standards, IPR and digital TV convergence: theories and empirical evidence," MPRA Paper 59359, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2013.
    19. Mucha, Tomasz & Seppälä, Timo, 2020. "Artificial Intelligence Platforms – A New Research Agenda for Digital Platform Economy," ETLA Working Papers 76, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    20. Michal Grajek, 2003. "Estimating Network Effects and Compatibility in Mobile Telecommunications," CIG Working Papers SP II 2003-26, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Open source Software industry IBM;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:21:y:2009:i:3:p:229-244. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505549 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.