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Is The General Public Licence A Rational Choice?

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  • ARNOLD POLANSKI

Abstract

Open source projects are networks of developers, distributors and end‐users of non‐proprietary created knowledge goods. It has been argued that this form of organization has some advantages over the firm or market coordination. I show that for sufficiently convex and modular projects, proprietary licences are not able to sustain sequential knowledge production which, however, can be carried out if the project is run on the open source basis.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnold Polanski, 2007. "Is The General Public Licence A Rational Choice?," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 691-714, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jindec:v:55:y:2007:i:4:p:691-714
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6451.2007.00326.x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    2. Pollock, R., 2008. "Cumulative Innovation, Experimentation and the Hold-Up Problem," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0817, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Tesoriere, Antonio & Balletta, Luigi, 2017. "A dynamic model of open source vs proprietary R&D," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 221-239.
    4. Dongryul Lee & Byung Kim, 2013. "Motivations for Open Source Project Participation and Decisions of Software Developers," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 41(1), pages 31-57, January.
    5. Gastón Llanes, 2019. "Competitive strategy for open and user innovation," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 280-297, April.
    6. Luigi Balletta & Antonio Tesoriere, 2020. "Cumulative innovation, open source, and distance to frontier," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(6), pages 1875-1920, December.
    7. Terrence August & Wei Chen & Kevin Zhu, 2021. "Competition Among Proprietary and Open-Source Software Firms: The Role of Licensing in Strategic Contribution," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 3041-3066, May.
    8. Sergio Petralia, 2024. "GitPat: A Database Linking Open Source Contributions & Patenting Activity of Organizations," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2437, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Nov 2024.

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