Private-collective Software Business Models: Cordinatitons and Commercialization via Licensing

Heli Koski

No 1091, Discussion Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: The private-collective business models that involve both private investment incentives and the production of public goods are not well understood. This empirically oriented research uses the unique data from the software industries of five European countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain) to illuminate the patterns of private, entrepreneurial provision of software placed in the public domain. The estimation results strongly suggest that the highly restrictive GPL (General Public License) works as an efficient coordination mechanism for the (leading) developers of the OSS community and spreads particularly via the firms that have participated in the OSS development projects. The software companies supplying the OSS, instead, tend not to aim at using the GPL to coordinate the further development of their own OSS. The firms are rather the origin of more flexibly licensed OSS products though gener-ally the software firms OSS business strategies relate to the restrictive licensing strategy choices

Keywords: Open Source software; licensing; business strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D23 L23 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-mic and nep-ppm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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