IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v73y2007i4p409-424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Exploration of the Ideologies of Software Intellectual Property: The Impact on Ethical Decision Making

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew McGowan
  • Paul Stephens
  • Dexter Gruber

Abstract

This article helps to clarify and articulate the ideological, legal, and ethical attitudes regarding software as intellectual property (IP). Computer software can be viewed as IP from both ethical and legal perspectives. The size and growth of the software industry suggest that large profits are possible through the development and sale of software. The rapid growth of the open source movement, fueled by the development of the Linux operating system, suggests another model is possible. The large number of unauthorized copies of software programs suggests that many people do not believe in laws regarding software copyright. There are many and varied views of software as IP, even within the information systems (IS) profession. In this article, four distinct subgroups of IS professionals are identified. The article describes the four subgroups and their respective ideological views on software ownership; it explores the subgroups’ attitudes regarding software laws; and finally, it explains the ethical positions embraced by each subgroup. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew McGowan & Paul Stephens & Dexter Gruber, 2007. "An Exploration of the Ideologies of Software Intellectual Property: The Impact on Ethical Decision Making," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 73(4), pages 409-424, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:73:y:2007:i:4:p:409-424
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9215-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-006-9215-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-006-9215-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Nancy Gallini & Suzanne Scotchmer, 2002. "Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 2, pages 51-78, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Some Simple Economics of Open Source," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 197-234, June.
    3. Justin Pappas Johnson, 2002. "Open Source Software: Private Provision of a Public Good," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(4), pages 637-662, December.
    4. Terrel Gallaway & Douglas Kinnear, 2004. "Open Source Software, the Wrongs of Copyright, and the Rise of Technology," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(2), pages 467-474, June.
    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. Livia Levine, 2019. "Digital Trust and Cooperation with an Integrative Digital Social Contract," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 393-407, December.

    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. Thomas Hellmann & Enrico Perotti, 2011. "The Circulation of Ideas in Firms and Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1813-1826, October.
    2. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    3. Bitzer, Jürgen & Geishecker, Ingo, 2010. "Who contributes voluntarily to OSS? An investigation among German IT employees," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 165-172, February.
    4. 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.
    5. Massimiliano Gambardella, 2011. "The Scope of Open Licenses in Cultural Contents Production and Distribution," Working Papers hal-04140977, HAL.
    6. Sebastian von Engelhardt & Sushmita Swaminathan, 2008. "Open Source Software, Closed Source Software or Both: Impacts on Industry Growth and the Role of Intellectual Property Rights," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 799, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Amit Mehra & Rajiv Dewan & Marshall Freimer, 2011. "Firms as Incubators of Open-Source Software," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 22-38, March.
    8. Michiel Bijlsma & Paul de Bijl & Viktoria Kocsis, 2009. "Concurrentie, innovatie en intellectuele eigendomsrechten in software markten," CPB Document 181, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    9. Aiping Tao & Qi Qi & Yi Li & Dan Da & Valentina Boamah & Decai Tang, 2022. "Game Analysis of the Open-Source Innovation Benefits of Two Enterprises from the Perspective of Product Homogenization and the Enterprise Strength Gap," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-22, May.
    10. Bitzer, Jurgen & Schrettl, Wolfram & Schroder, Philipp J.H., 2007. "Intrinsic motivation in open source software development," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 160-169, March.
    11. 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.
    12. Gaudeul, Alexia, 2008. "Open Source Licensing in Mixed Markets, or Why Open Source Software Does Not Succeed," MPRA Paper 19596, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Nicholas Economides & Evangelos Katsamakas, 2005. "Linux vs. Windows: A comparison of application and platform innovation incentives for open source and proprietary software platforms+," Working Papers 05-03, NET Institute, revised Sep 2005.
    14. Robert M. Sauer, 2007. "Why develop open-source software? The role of non-pecuniary benefits, monetary rewards, and open-source licence type," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 605-619, Winter.
    15. Cerquera Dussán, Daniel & Müller, Bettina, 2009. "Open Source, ICT infrastructure and firm performance," ZEW Discussion Papers 09-089, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    16. Dongryul Lee & Byung Kim, 2013. "Motivations for Open Source Project Participation and Decisions of Software Developers," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 41(1), pages 31-57, January.
    17. Giuri, Paola & Ploner, Matteo & Rullani, Francesco & Torrisi, Salvatore, 2010. "Skills, division of labor and performance in collective inventions: Evidence from open source software," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 54-68, January.
    18. Michael Schwarz & Yuri Takhteyev, 2010. "Half a Century of Public Software Institutions: Open Source as a Solution to Hold‐Up Problem," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(4), pages 609-639, August.
    19. Kevin J. Boudreau & Lars B. Jeppesen, 2015. "Unpaid crowd complementors: The platform network effect mirage," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(12), pages 1761-1777, December.
    20. Vidya Atal & Kameshwari Shankar, 2014. "Open Source Software: Competition with A Public Good," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 42(3), pages 333-345, September.

    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:kap:jbuset:v:73:y:2007:i:4:p:409-424. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.