What can be Learnt from these Browser Wars

Huibert Vries, Henk Vries and Ilan Oshri

Chapter 9 in Standards Battles in Open Source Software, 2008, pp 135-146 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract At this juncture we ask: How does OSS change standards-setting activities? We argue that OSS changes the approach of standardssetting in the first place because of its open, but not necessarily completely open, collaborative development and joint promotion of an open standard, in contrast to mostly solitary development and single-company promotion of a closed standard in cases of proprietary software. The open license allows for access to the source code, and the modification thereof, thus allowing an open and collaborative approach of development and subsequent promotion. The license in the case under study allows for commercial derivatives and the combination with proprietary software. The open standard can then also serve as the basis for a proprietary, competing standard, such as Netscape’s Mozilla derivative in the second browser war. The license thus makes it attractive for firms to participate in the standard’s development and promotion.

Keywords: Open Standard; Open Source Software; Network Effect; Proprietary Software; Company Involvement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59509-5_9

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230595095

DOI: 10.1057/9780230595095_9

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().