Les Logiciels Libres: un nouveau modèle ?

Denis Phan () and Christian Genthon ()
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Christian Genthon: IREPD - Institut de Recherche Économique sur la Production et le Développement - UPMF - Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: The so-called "free" software are currently attracting a great deal of interest. The sources of this success can be related in particular to the economic characteristics of software, on the one hand, and to the structural evolution of the computer industry, on the other. From an economic point of view, software has some of the attributes that characterize "public goods" (non-exclusivity, positive externalities). These characteristics mean that the non-market production of software has always existed. In this world, the practices developed around the "Berkeley" distribution of the Unix operating system played an important role in the emergence of the "free" software movement, which must also be interpreted as a reaction against the practices of the commercial (profit-oriented) software industry. What are the reasons, however, that have allowed this new approach to successfully emerge from the marginality in which it was previously confined? A brief comparison of the modes of production of free software (distributed cooperation, interaction between programmers and users, use of the Internet) and of commercial software (centralization, methodology) does not show a decisive advantage in favor of one mode or the other. The take-off of free software was made possible by the expansion of the Internet, which it favored and from which it benefited. The current breakthrough, which sees free software leaving the market niche of Internet servers, is favored by the strategies of the large groups of the computer industry facing the current domination of Microsoft. All the other players are looking for an alternative. The "free" software, because it follows another logic, can arouse the consensus of firms in competition. It is therefore today part of the evolutionary movement of the commercial software industry.

Keywords: sofware industry; industrial economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04021741v1
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Published in Terminal, 1999, Spécial " Les logiciels libres, de l'utopie au marché " (80-81), pp.167-188

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