In this paper, we open up the black box that has been the introduction of open practices into firms’ commercial R&D strategies. Most of the existing research on the phenomenon of open innovation focuses on its interorganizational aspects. In contrast, the effect that the opening of boundaries...

In this paper, I describe and analyze the phenomenon of informal development collaborationbetween firms in the field of embedded Linux, a type of open source software. Toexplain the observed phenomenon of voluntary revealing, I develop a duopoly model ofquality competition. The central...

The link between firms engaging in open source software (OSS) development and the OSScommunity is established by individual developers. This linkage might entail a principalagentissue due to the developer’s double allegiance to firm and OSS community, and exposethe firm to the risk of losing...

This paper provides a quantitative study (N = 268) of patterns of free revealing offirm-developed innovations within embedded Linux, a type of open source software (OSS). Ifind that firms, without being obliged to do so, contribute many of their own developmentsback to public embedded Linux...

Using a unique dataset we examine empirically which factors explain output per contributor in open source projects. We find that the output per contributor of open source programmes is much higher when licenses are less restrictive. Further examination suggests that the difference in output per...

Digital goods are bit strings, sequences of 0s and 1s, that have economic value. They are distinguished from other goods by five characteristics: digital goods are non-rival, infinitely expansible, discrete, aspatial, and recombinant. The New Economy is one where the economics of digital goods...

Product development within and across community-based and geographically dispersed virtual organizations is becoming an increasingly important mechanism through which individual knowledge holders create and disseminate knowledge in joint efforts to generate products. Without the benefits of...

The open source model is a form of software development with source code that is typically made available to all interested parties. At the core of this process is a decentralized production process: open source software development is done by a network of unpaid software developers. Using data...

How can we explain the success of cooperative networks of firms that share innovations, such as Silicon Valley or the Open Source community? This Paper shows that if innovations are cumulative, making an invention publicly available to a network of firms may be valuable if the firm expects to...

This Paper discusses the economic merits of direct or indirect governmental support for open source projects. Software markets differ from standard textbook markets in three important respects that may give rise to market failures: (i) large economies of scale, (ii) crucially important...