IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ins/quaeco/qf0806.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Licensing and Business Models

Author

Listed:
  • Onetti Alberto

    (Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy)

  • Verma Sameer

    (Associate Professor in Information Systems – San Francisco State University – College of Business)

Abstract

License affects software companies’ business activities. While proprietary software vendors create custom licenses, open source companies have less flexibility. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) defines a list of 72 licenses as open source (“OSI approved”). For a project to follow open source licensing, it has to pick licenses from this set. Logically, we expect that an open source company defines its business model around the license that it selects. Thus, we can assume that business model decisions follow license choice. In our research we find that in some cases open source companies remove these license constraints for business reasons. We observed cases of open source companies moving from one OSI-approved license to another or companies innovating by adding additional terms. In all these cases, the decision of change is based on the license being a poor fit with their business goals. Not all open source companies are entitled to change the license because this option is available only to companies that own intellectual property. If they do not, they can try to reshape their business model, but that remains a suboptimal option. Whether cognizant of it or not, organizations are implicitly choosing a business model when they select a license. Therefore, it is very important to address licensing and business model decisions as one system instead of a disjointed two-step process. For this purpose we introduce (1) an evolutionary model where license selection and business model impact each other and (2) a taxonomy that addresses both licensing and business models. Our approach helps practitioners include revenue considerations in the licensing choice and researchers to more accurately study the antecedents and consequences of license choice.

Suggested Citation

  • Onetti Alberto & Verma Sameer, 2008. "Licensing and Business Models," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf0806, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
  • Handle: RePEc:ins:quaeco:qf0806
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.eco.uninsubria.it/RePEc/pdf/QF2008_6.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. X. X. Huang, 2000. "Extended Well-Posedness Properties of Vector Optimization Problems," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 106(1), pages 165-182, July.
    2. J. B. Hiriart-Urruty, 1979. "Tangent Cones, Generalized Gradients and Mathematical Programming in Banach Spaces," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 4(1), pages 79-97, February.
    3. G. P. Crespi & A. Guerraggio & M. Rocca, 2007. "Well Posedness in Vector Optimization Problems and Vector Variational Inequalities," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 213-226, January.
    4. M. Durea, 2007. "Scalarization for pointwise well-posed vectorial problems," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 66(3), pages 409-418, December.
    5. X. X. Huang, 2001. "Extended and strongly extended well-posedness of set-valued optimization problems," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 53(1), pages 101-116, April.
    6. E. Miglierina & E. Molho, 2002. "Scalarization and Stability in Vector Optimization," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 657-670, September.
    7. E. Miglierina & E. Molho & M. Rocca, 2005. "Well-Posedness and Scalarization in Vector Optimization," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 126(2), pages 391-409, August.
    8. X. X. Huang, 2001. "Pointwise Well-Posedness of Perturbed Vector Optimization Problems in a Vector-Valued Variational Principle," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 108(3), pages 671-684, March.
    9. E. Miglierina & E. Molho, 2003. "Well-posedness and convexity in vector optimization," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 58(3), pages 375-385, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Rocca Matteo & Papalia Melania, 2008. "Well-posedness in vector optimization and scalarization results," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf0807, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
    2. X. J. Long & J. W. Peng, 2013. "Generalized B-Well-Posedness for Set Optimization Problems," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 612-623, June.
    3. G. P. Crespi & M. Papalia & M. Rocca, 2009. "Extended Well-Posedness of Quasiconvex Vector Optimization Problems," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 141(2), pages 285-297, May.
    4. Miglierina Enrico & Molho Elena & Rocca Matteo, 2004. "Well-posedness and scalarization in vector optimization," Economics and Quantitative Methods qf0403, Department of Economics, University of Insubria.
    5. Giovanni P. Crespi & Mansi Dhingra & C. S. Lalitha, 2018. "Pointwise and global well-posedness in set optimization: a direct approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 269(1), pages 149-166, October.
    6. Y. P. Fang & R. Hu & N. J. Huang, 2007. "Extended B-Well-Posedness and Property (H) for Set-Valued Vector Optimization with Convexity," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 445-458, December.
    7. S. Khoshkhabar-amiranloo & E. Khorram, 2015. "Pointwise well-posedness and scalarization in set optimization," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 82(2), pages 195-210, October.
    8. Meenakshi Gupta & Manjari Srivastava, 2019. "Well-posedness and scalarization in set optimization involving ordering cones with possibly empty interior," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 447-463, February.
    9. Xian-Jun Long & Jian-Wen Peng & Zai-Yun Peng, 2015. "Scalarization and pointwise well-posedness for set optimization problems," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 763-773, August.
    10. M. Bianchi & G. Kassay & R. Pini, 2009. "Well-posedness for vector equilibrium problems," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 70(1), pages 171-182, August.
    11. Elisa Mastrogiacomo & Matteo Rocca, 2021. "Set optimization of set-valued risk measures," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 296(1), pages 291-314, January.
    12. C. Lalitha & Prashanto Chatterjee, 2014. "Levitin–Polyak well-posedness for constrained quasiconvex vector optimization problems," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 191-205, May.
    13. Yi-bin Xiao & Nan-jing Huang, 2011. "Well-posedness for a Class of Variational–Hemivariational Inequalities with Perturbations," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 151(1), pages 33-51, October.
    14. Giovanni Paolo Crespi & Andreas H. Hamel & Matteo Rocca & Carola Schrage, 2021. "Set Relations via Families of Scalar Functions and Approximate Solutions in Set Optimization," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 46(1), pages 361-381, February.
    15. San-hua Wang & Nan-jing Huang & Donal O’Regan, 2013. "Well-posedness for generalized quasi-variational inclusion problems and for optimization problems with constraints," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 189-208, January.
    16. Gang Xiao & Hong Xiao & Sanyang Liu, 2011. "Scalarization and pointwise well-posedness in vector optimization problems," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 561-574, April.
    17. Li Zhu & Fu-quan Xia, 2012. "Scalarization method for Levitin–Polyak well-posedness of vectorial optimization problems," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 76(3), pages 361-375, December.
    18. S. Li & W. Zhang, 2010. "Hadamard well-posed vector optimization problems," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 383-393, March.
    19. Ya-ping Fang & Nan-jing Huang, 2007. "Increasing-along-rays property, vector optimization and well-posedness," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 65(1), pages 99-114, February.
    20. C. S. Lalitha & Prashanto Chatterjee, 2012. "Stability for Properly Quasiconvex Vector Optimization Problem," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 492-506, November.

    More about this item

    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:ins:quaeco:qf0806. 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: Segreteria Dipartimento (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feinsit.html .

    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.