Copyright vs. Copyleft Licencing and Software Development

Massimo D'Antoni and Maria Alessandra Rossi ()

Department of Economics University of Siena from Department of Economics, University of Siena

Abstract: This article aims at clarifying the role played by licenses within the increasingly relevant Open Source Software (OSS) phenomenon. In particular, the article explores from a theoretical point of view the comparative properties of the two main categories of OSS license--copyleft and non-copyleft licenses--in terms of their ability to stimulate innovation and coordination of development efforts. In order to do so, the paper relies on an incomplete contracting model. The model shows that, in spite of the fact that copyleft licenses entail the enjoyment of a narrower set of rights by both licensors and licensees, they may be preferred to non-copyleft licenses when coordination of complementary investments in development is important. It thus provides a non-ideologically-based explanation for the puzzling evidence showing the dominance, in terms of diffusion, of copyleft licenses.

Keywords: intellectual property rights; open source; copyright; copyleft; GPL license; incentives to innovation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L17 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-knm and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.deps.unisi.it/quaderni/510.pdf (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:usi:wpaper:510

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics University of Siena from Department of Economics, University of Siena Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Fabrizio Becatti ().