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Open Source as a Public Good
Open source licenses are the building blocks for open source applications. They lay out the rules for modification and redistribution. The aim of open source licenses is ultimately to open up computer applications, encourage collective development and promote redistribution (Rosen, 2004). To study and improve the software, developers need to access an application’s source code, the programming instructions in human-readable form. To this end, the source code needs to be open, hence the term open source.
These licenses create a public good. Open source applications are non-rival and to some extent excludable. Because it is an information good, the open source application is by its very nature non-rival: One’s own consumption does not diminish the availibility to others. A potential user of an open source application has to agree to the conditions of the open source license upon installing the software. Once he accepts the terms, he is a member of the community of this application, he benefits from the application, but at the same time has to abide by the rules of the license agreement. All such licenses delineate the way modifications to the software are treated and how one can redistribute the software. These restrictions make open source software in fact a specific kind of public good: A club good. The open source license acts as a gatekeeper who ensures that the rules of the open source community apply to every user of the software. In contrast to the textbook example, open source software does not suffer from congestion for all members. Open source communities may experience positive externalities through increased use. More users can help find programming glitches and problems, as Raymond (2001) states “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. This might not be true for contributors, though. As the number of contributors increases, congestion in development activities may occur.
Firms’ involvement in open source projects
Cooperation between voluntary and corporate developers is of particular interest. The open innovation paradigm (Chesbrough, 2003) suggests that complementarities in skills and objectives may further boost open source production. Firms are for instance more interested in improving user interfaces or interoperability with hardware – two dimensions which are usually neglected by voluntary user-developers (Lerner and Tirole, 2002; Scotchmer and Maurer, 2006). Yet corporate developers may also be reluctant to share source code if the competitive advantage of their firm is at stake (Henkel, 2008). As a result, they practice various forms of selective revealing to protect valuable information from leaking to open source projects (Bonaccorsi and Rossi, 2003b; Dahlander andWallin, 2006; ?). Reflecting the conflict of interest, Henkel (2006) observes that 51% of surveyed firms do not reveal their contributions to open source projects at all. Still, many firms contribute to open source projects, some of them intensively (Dahlander and Magnusson, 2005). Beyond compliance with open source licenses, they do so to be able to influence the project’s development path, which in turn requires being perceived as a good player by voluntary programmers (Henkel, 2006). Accordingly, corporate developers tend to work in key positions in open source projects, and to interact more frequently than others with core developers (Dahlander and Wallin, 2006).
Econometric Model
The measurement of open source projects’ productivity encounters the same type of difficulties as any attempt to measure the true productivity of research (Hausman et al., 1984). Ideally, we would need a measure of the social return of each project, including the utility users derive from the software as well as the spillovers to other projects. Unlike corporate research, the prices of innovative goods cannot proxy spillovers, let alone users’ utility, for open source software is distributed royalty free. It might be more realistic to infer private returns, namely the returns for contributors, from their degree of individual involvement. Such a work would require precise information on their individual productivity and the time they spend on each project.
Our objective in this paper is more modest and constitutes a first step in that direction. We focus on the determinants of technical success in open source software development, as measured by software releases. Such releases signal that a new version of the open source software is ready for download. They provide an interesting proxy of innovative output since released versions are generally improvements upon the previous versions which they replace.
Table of contents :
Preface
Introduction
1 Corporate Open Source – A Literature Review
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Open Source as a Public Good
1.3 Corporate Use of Open Source Software
1.4 Open Source Business Models
1.5 Open Source and Proprietary Software
1.6 Contribution
1.7 Corporate Strategies
1.7.1 Protection of Intellectual Property
1.7.2 Types of Corporate Contribution
1.8 Conclusion
2 A Look Inside the Forge: Developer productivity and spillovers in SourceForge projects
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Background
2.2.1 Programmers
2.2.2 Organization
2.2.3 Firms’ involvement in open source projects
2.2.4 Spillovers
2.3 Econometric Model
2.4 Data
2.4.1 Data Source
2.4.2 Descriptives
2.5 Discussion
2.5.1 Developer Productivities
2.5.2 Scale effects
2.5.3 Spillovers
2.6 Conclusion
3 Loose Contracts, Tight Control: Corporate contributions in Source- Forge projects
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Background
3.2.1 Incomplete Contracts
3.3 Data
3.3.1 Quantitative Data
3.3.2 Exploratory Survey
3.4 Discussion
3.5 Concluding Remarks
Conclusion
