We present a fairly general model in which firms are competitors in a commercial market segment and can invest into a complementary public good like open source software. We show that, contrary to standard predictions, additional contribution to the public good by the government or a new market...

Technology platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, are the hubs of technology industries. We develop a framework to characterize the optimal two-sided pricing strategy of a platform firm, that is, the pricing strategy towards the direct users of the platform as well as towards firms offering...

We consider a firm A initially owning a software platform (e.g. operating system) and an application for this platform. The specific knowledge of another firm B is needed to make the platform successful by creating a further application. When B’s application is completed, A has incentives to...

We study an endogenous growth model where a profit-motivated R and D sector coexists with the introduction of free blueprints invented by philanthropists. These goods are priced at marginal cost, contrary to proprietary ones which are produced by a monopoly owned by the inventor. We show that...

Despite the availability of source code, deploying open source software (OSS) in an enterprise environment requires expertise. Recent surveys and case studies show that the skills of IT staff in an organization are one of the key factors in OSS adoption decisions. Another important factor...

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free...

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the...

We use a Hotelling linear city model to study competition between open source and proprietary software, where only the producer of the proprietary software aims at maximizing the profit. The producer of the proprietary software must decide on compatibility. Different compatibility strategies...

We use a Hotelling linear city model to study competition between open source and proprietary software, where only the producer of the proprietary software aims at maximizing the profit. The producer of the proprietary software must decide on compatibility. Different compatibility strategies...

This paper presents the stylized facts of open source software innovation and provides empirical evidence on the impact of increased competition by OSS on the innovative activity in the software industry. Furthermore, we introduce a simple formal model that captures the innovation impact of OSS...