Dual licensing in open source software markets

Stefano Comino () and Fabio Manenti ()

No 718, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: Dual licensing has proved to be a sustainable business model for various commercial software vendors employing open source strategies. In this paper we study the main characteristics of dual licensing and under which conditions it represents a profitable commercial strategy. We show that dual licensing is a form of versioning, whereby the software vendor uses the open source licensing terms in order to induce commercial customers to select the proprietary version of the software. Furthermore, we show that the software vendor prefers dual licensing to a fully proprietary strategy when the customers are very sensitive to the reciprocal terms of the open source license.

Keywords: Open source software; dual licensing; copyright; versioning; forking. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D45 L11 L17 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Dual licensing in open source software markets (2011)
Working Paper: Dual Licensing in Open Source Software Markets (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpde:0718

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