Firms' contribution to open‐source software and the dominant user's skill

Abstract

Free, libre or open‐source software (FLOSS) is nowadays produced not only by individual benevolent developers but, in a growing proportion, by firms that hire programmers for their own objectives of development in open source or for contributing to open‐source projects in the context of dedicated communities. A recent literature has focused on the question of the business models explaining how and why firms may draw benefits from such involvement and their connected activities. They can be considered as the building blocks of a new modus operandi of an industry, built on an alternative approach to intellectual property management. Its prospects will depend on both the firms' willingness to rally and its ability to compete with the traditional ‘proprietary’ approach. As a matter of fact, firms' involvement in FLOSS, while growing, remains very contrasted, depending on the nature of the products and the characteristics of the markets. This paper asks why for‐profit firms contribute to FLOSS development and why some firms contribute more than others. The common explanation is that FLOSS is often a complement to proprietary software (or hardware or services) that the for‐profit firm sells at a positive price. We present an alternative explanation based on the users' skill level. When users are skilled, opening the software is likely to result in a better product because the user base will contribute improvements (find bugs, write fixes and produce new features). We introduce the concept of the dominant user's skill and set up a theoretical model to better understand how it may condition the nature and outcome of the competition between a FLOSS firm and a proprietary firm. We discuss these results in the light of stylized facts drawn from recent trends in the software industry.

A Fistful of Dollars: Are Financial Rewards a Suitable Management Practice for Distributed Models of Innovation?

“…Here, external volunteers may assist the organization by self‐selecting into problems or tasks that the organization does not have the skills or resources to complete on its own (e.g., Jeppesen & Lakhani, 2010). The success of open source software (OSS) development represents an illustrative example of the viability of this model and has been documented as such by academic research (e.g., von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003; von Krogh & von Hippel, 2006; Jullien & Zimmermann, 2009) as well as reports by members of the commercial sector (e.g., Driver & Weiss, 2005; CED, 2006).…”

FLOSS in an industrial economics perspective

“…What seems clear from a rather qualitative analysis, and was formally demonstrated in Jullien and Zimmermann (2009), is that the skill of the users matters for understanding the level of firms' involvement in FLOSS. When users are naïve, firms may use FLOSS, but only for price reasons, in the same (16) With the aim to provide «a computer for each pupil»: http://www.ordina13.com/, http:// www.ordi35.fr/ (17) See, for instance, the competition between Microsoft and Mandriva to supply 17,000 computers in Nigeria.…”

Floss firms, users and communities: a viable match?

“…Conversely, thanks to the Internet, and regarding FLOSS, a handful of very talented users around the world can weigh enough together to develop a FLOSS alternative to private offers and contribute to the emergence of a FLOSS business offer. So, what we denote users' skills appears as a subtle mix between competences and number, which could yield a "weighted sum of competences" [32].…”

“…The dependence of users' skill. [32], it that the skill of the users matters for understanding the level of implication of firms in FLOSS. When users are naive, firms may use FLOSS, but only for price reasons, in the same way as they could use freeware.…”