Dual licensing in open source software markets

Stefano Comino () and Fabio Manenti ()

Information Economics and Policy, 2011, vol. 23, issue 3, 234-242

Abstract: In this paper we present a theoretical model to study the characteristics and the commercial sustainability of dual licensing, an open source (OS) business strategy that has gained popularity among software vendors. With dual licensing, a firm releases the same software product under both a traditional proprietary license and an open source one. We show that the decision to employ a dual licensing strategy occurs whenever the feedbacks of the open source community are valuable enough compared to the quality of the software that the firm is able to develop in-house. Our analysis points to the central role of an appropriate managing of OS licenses in order to balance the pros and cons of “going open source” and to make this versioning strategy viable for software vendors; our analysis also suggests a possible explanation for the observed proliferation of open source licenses.

Keywords: Open source software; Open source business models; Embedded software; Dual licensing; Versioning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D45 L11 L17 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Dual Licensing in Open Source Software Markets (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:23:y:2011:i:3:p:234-242

DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2011.07.001

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