Open Source Licensing in Mixed Markets, or Why Open Source Software Does Not Succeed

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Open Source Licensing in Mixed Markets, or Why Open Source Software Does Not Succeed

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Alexia Gaudeul () (School of Economics and Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia)

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Alexia Gaudeul

Abstract

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the Berkeley Software Distribution as proprietary developers will then find it easier to adopt her standard in their products. If she wants to promote the use of open source software per se, she may use more restrictive license terms such as the General Public License to discourage proprietary appropriation of her effort. I show that open source software that comes late into a market will be less likely than more innovative open source software to be compatible with proprietary software, but is also more likely to be made more accessible to inexperienced users.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia in its series Working Papers with number 08-2.

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Length: 31 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2008
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Handle: RePEc:ccp:wpaper:wp08-02

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs
L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
O34 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Intellectual Property Rights
O38 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Government Policy

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2008-02-23 (All new papers)
NEP-COM-2008-02-23 (Industrial Competition)
NEP-ICT-2008-02-23 (Information & Communication Technologies)
NEP-INO-2008-02-23 (Innovation)
NEP-IPR-2008-02-23 (Intellectual Property Rights)
NEP-NET-2008-02-23 (Network Economics)

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