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Summary of 13 pages for the course Digital Innovation at UU (Literature Summary)
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Literature Digital InnovationWeek 5 Some simple economics of open source
Open-source software development involves developers at many different locations and
organizations sharing code to develop and refine programs.
Open-source software development
o Three factors of interests
The rapid diffusion of open-source software
Open-source products are diffusing fast and might become to
challenge Microsoft
The significant capital investments in open-source projects
Many big firms have invested in projects to develop open-
source software
Other firms have received venture capital financing
The new organization structures
The collaborative nature of open-source software development
is seen as an important organization innovation
o Why is it such a success?
Why do successful programmers contribute freely?
Altruism has not played a big role in other industries not very likely
that they only contribute for the greater good
Nature of open-source software
o Diffusion of internet helps increasing the scale and formalization of
cooperation and sharing in software development
o Three eras’
First era = early 1960s to early 1980s
Sharing by programmers in different organizations of basic
operating code of computer programs, the source code, was
commonplace
Focus on development of an operating system that could run
on multiple computer platforms
Highly informal basis no property right
Became problematic in early 1980s when AT&T began
enforcing them
Second era = early 1980s to early 1990s
First efforts to formalize the ground rules behind the
cooperative software development process
When able to modify and distribute software programmers had
to agree to make the source code freely available also no
licensing restrictions on others
Contractual terms distinguish open-source software form
shareware (not free)
Third era = early 1990s to today (2002)
Widespread diffusion of the internet increased the open-
source activity
, More interaction between commercial and open-source
companies
Alternative approaches to licensing cooperatively developed
software right to bundle cooperatively developed software
with proprietary code
Open-source definition = license must not contaminate other
software, the license must no place restrictions on other
software that is distributed along with the licensed software
o Example the license must not insist that all other
programs distributed on the same medium must be
open-source software
o Distributors of open-source software have the right to
make their own choices about their own software
o Challenges of open-source software
Forking of projects
The development of competing variations and the
development of products for high-end users
Splintering into various variants
Lesser emphasis on documentation and support, user interfaces, and
backward compatibility in open-source projects
More for the more sophisticated users
o Who contributes?
Distribution of contributors is skewed in number of contributions
Open-source process is elitist few important contributors and small
core
Problem of the elitist movement can steer innovation more
Difficulty increases because elitist people are knowledgeable
Commercial software is ‘easier’
Four programs
o Apache
One of the first commercial internet servers in the country,
responsibility was for Behlendorf
Running the Unix-based software
NCSA had distributed its source code freely and had a development
group actively involved in refining the code in consultation with the
pioneering users
NCSA staff was frustrating Behlendorf by not responding to their
suggestion
He and six others decided to establish a mailing list to collect the
patches to NCSA server software
Chances to the application program interface enabled
programmers to make contributions to particular areas without affect
other aspects of the program
Little competition, so they stayed dominant apache software
foundation oversaw the development and diffusion of the program
(1999)
o Linux
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