Do Open Source Developers Respond to Competition? The LATEX Case Study

Gaudeul Alex ()
Additional contact information
Gaudeul Alex: University of East Anglia
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alexandre Gaudeul and Alexia Gaudeul

Review of Network Economics, 2007, vol. 6, issue 2, 25

Abstract: This paper traces the history of TEX, the open source typesetting program. TEX was an early and very successful open source project that imposed its standards in a particularly competitive environment and inspired many advances in the typesetting industry. Developed over three decades, TEX came into competition with a variety of open source and proprietary alternatives. I argue from this case study that open source developers derive direct and indirect network externalities from the use of their software by others and must therefore consider non-developers' needs to make their software more attractive to a broader audience and more competitive with proprietary alternatives.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1446-9022.1119 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:rneart:v:6:y:2007:i:2:n:9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/rne/html

DOI: 10.2202/1446-9022.1119

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Network Economics is currently edited by Lukasz Grzybowski

More articles in Review of Network Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().