From Planning to Mature: on the Determinants of Open Source Take-Off

Fabio Manenti (), Stefano Comino () and Maria Laura Parisi

Industrial Organization from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Thanks to a recent and vast empirical literature, we know in details how the most popular open source projects are organized and why they succeed. However open source is not only Linux: in this paper we use a large data-set obtained from SourceForge.net to estimate the main determinants of the progress in the development of a stable and mature code of an open source software. We show that projects geared towards sophisticated users (i.e. system administrators) or projects aimed at developing tools for the Internet, multimedia and software have greater chances to reach an advanced development stage. On the contrary, projects devoted to the production of applications for games and telecommunication as well as projects distributed under highly restrictive licensing terms (GPL) have a significantly smaller probability to advance. Interestingly, we find that the size of the "community of developers" increases the chances of progress but this effect decreases as the community gets larger, a signal of possible coordination problems. Finally, we show that the determinants of projects' development stage change with the age of the project in many dimensions thus supporting the common perception of open source as an extremely dynamic phenomenon.

Keywords: software market; open source software; development status; intended audience; license (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L51 L63 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-07-21, Revised 2005-09-29
Note: Type of Document - pdf
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Working Paper: From Planning to Mature: on the Determinants of Open Source Take-Off (2007)
Working Paper: From Planning to Mature: on the Determinants of Open Source Take Off (2005)
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