Dynamics of Open Source Movements
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dynamics8.pdf
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924.68 KB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Athey, Susan
Ellison, Glenn
Date Issued
April 2014
Journal
Journal of Economics & Management Strategy
Publisher
Wiley Blackwell
Citation
Athey, Susan, and Glenn Ellison. “Dynamics of Open Source Movements.” Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 23, no. 2 (April 4, 2014): 294–316.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
This paper considers a dynamic model of the evolution of open-source software projects, focusing on the evolution of quality, contributing programmers, and users who contribute customer support to other users. Programmers who have used open-source software (OSS) are motivated by reciprocal altruism to publish their own improvements. The evolution of the open-source project depends on the form of the altruistic benefits: in a base case the project grows to a steady-state size from any initial condition; whereas adding a need for customer support makes zero-quality a locally absorbing state. We also analyze competition by commercial firms with OSS projects. Optimal pricing policies again vary: in some cases the commercial firm will set low prices when the open-source project is small; in other cases it mostly waits until the open-source project has matured.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jems.12053
