Open Source Licensing in Mixed Markets, or Why Open Source Software Does Not Succeed

Alexia Gaudeul

No 08-2, Working Papers from Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia

Abstract: The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the Berkeley Software Distribution as proprietary developers will then find it easier to adopt her standard in their products. If she wants to promote the use of open source software per se, she may use more restrictive license terms such as the General Public License to discourage proprietary appropriation of her effort. I show that open source software that comes late into a market will be less likely than more innovative open source software to be compatible with proprietary software, but is also more likely to be made more accessible to inexperienced users.

Keywords: open source; software; standards; compatibility; network effects; duopoly; mixed markets; intellectual property; copyright; licensing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 H41 L13 L22 L31 L86 O34 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-net
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http://www.ccp.uea.ac.uk/publicfiles/workingpapers/CCP08-2.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Open Source Licensing in Mixed Markets, or Why Open Source Software Does Not Succeed (2008)
Working Paper: Open Source Licensing in Mixed Markets, or Why Open Source Software Does Not Succeed (2008)
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