Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS): lessons for intellectual property rights management in a knowledge-based economy

Nicolas Jullien and Jean-Benoit Zimmermann

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to focus on the emerging situation in which open source software is nowadays produced not only by individual developers but in a growing proportion by firms that hire programmers for their own objectives of development in open source or for contributing to open source projects in the context of dedicated communities. As commercial firms it is important to analyze how and why they are capable of drawing benefits from such involvement and their connected activities. Moreover, we want to stress the different types of business model these firms rely on and the possible evolution they are likely to follow in the near future. We shown how Open Source principles provide an alternative way of thinking and managing intellectual property that do not come up against the same problems but needs a radical change in the way of drawing commercial benefits from knowledge development tasks. Then we analyze the growinginvolvement of commercial actors by setting up a typology of the different business models that can beobserved in the OS landscape, how they correspond to the different strategies of industrial firms according tothe main characteristics of their technical skills and market position. Finally, in a conclusive section we willdraw the main lessons of the FLOSS experience for a possible enlargement of those principles of IPRmanagement and business to other knowledge based commercial activities.

Keywords: Open Source Software; intellectual property rights; GPL; knowledge sharing; entreprise strategy; business model; users; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00410781v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00410781v1/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:wpaper:halshs-00410781

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().