EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Coexistence and Market Tipping in a Diffusion Model of Open Source vs. Proprietary Software

Riccardo Leoncini, Francesco Rentocchini and Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti

Revue d'économie industrielle, 2011, vol. n° 136, issue 4, 141-168

Abstract: A large number of studies has been canvassed by the growing rates of diffusion of Open Source Software. However, a formal analysis of the process of competition between open-source and proprietary software is still missing. We propose an epidemic model of innovation diffusion to deal with the different factors (profits for proprietary software and developers? motivations for open-source software) upon which such a process of competition ultimately depends. Moreover, we add network effects and switching costs, together with the endogenisation of the parameters of the speed of diffusion influencing the final outcome. We show the conditions for an asymptotically stable equilibrium to exist, where both softwares coexist. When the propagation coefficient is endogenous, winner-take-all solutions are also likely. sts for one software increases the number of its adopters, while reducing that of the other one. If the negative network effects increase for one of the two softwares, then the equilibrium level of users of that software decreases.

Keywords: Increasing returns; Model of diffusion; Open-Source Software; Technological competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REI_136_0141 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-industrielle-2011-4-page-141.htm (text/html)
free

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:cai:reidbu:rei_136_0141

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue d'économie industrielle from De Boeck Université
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:cai:reidbu:rei_136_0141