IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/mtp/titles/0262014632.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development

Author

Listed:
  • Lerner, Josh

    (Harvard Business School)

Abstract

Discussions of the economic impact of open source software often generate more heat than light. Advocates passionately assert the benefits of open source while critics decry its effects. Missing from the debate is rigorous economic analysis and systematic economic evidence of the impact of open source on consumers, firms, and economic development in general. This book fills that gap. In The Comingled Code, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, drawing on a new, large-scale database, show that open source and proprietary software interact in sometimes unexpected ways, and discuss the policy implications of these findings. The new data (from a range of countries in varying stages of development) documents the mixing of open source and proprietary software: firms sell proprietary software while contributing to open source, and users extensively mix and match the two. Lerner and Schankerman examine the ways in which software differs from other technologies in promoting economic development, what motivates individuals and firms to contribute to open source projects, how developers and users view the trade-offs between the two kinds of software, and how government policies can ensure that open source competes effectively with proprietary software and contributes to economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • Lerner, Josh, 2010. "The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262014632, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtp:titles:0262014632
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schrape, Jan-Felix, 2017. "Open source projects as incubators of innovation: From niche phenomenon to integral part of the software industry," Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers 2017-03, University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies.
    2. Reisinger, Markus & Ressner, Ludwig & Schmidtke, Richard & Thomes, Tim Paul, 2014. "Crowding-in of complementary contributions to public goods: Firm investment into open source software," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 78-94.
    3. Wright, Nataliya Langburd & Nagle, Frank & Greenstein, Shane, 2023. "Open source software and global entrepreneurship," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).
    4. Frank Nagle, 2019. "Open Source Software and Firm Productivity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1191-1215, March.
    5. Yu-Kai Lin & Arun Rai, 2024. "The Scope of Software Patent Protection in the Digital Age: Evidence from Alice," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 657-672, June.
    6. Wen Wen & Marco Ceccagnoli & Chris Forman, 2016. "Opening Up Intellectual Property Strategy: Implications for Open Source Software Entry by Start-up Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(9), pages 2668-2691, September.
    7. Matt Germonprez & Julie E. Kendall & Kenneth E. Kendall & Lars Mathiassen & Brett Young & Brian Warner, 2017. "A Theory of Responsive Design: A Field Study of Corporate Engagement with Open Source Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 64-83, March.
    8. Wen Wen & Marco Ceccagnoli & Chris Forman, 2012. "Patent Pools, Thickets, and Open Source Software Entry by Start-Up Firms," NBER Chapters, in: Standards, Patents and Innovations, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Marina Doroshenko & Kirill Skripkin, 2013. "Developing the National Software Market: Public Policy Alternatives," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 44-57.
    10. Maican, Florin G., 2012. "From Boom to Bust and Back Again: A dynamic analysis of IT services," Working Papers in Economics 543, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    11. Colombo, Massimo G. & Piva, Evila & Rossi-Lamastra, Cristina, 2014. "Open innovation and within-industry diversification in small and medium enterprises: The case of open source software firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 891-902.
    12. Murciano-Goroff, Raviv & Zhuo, Ran & Greenstein, Shane, 2021. "Hidden software and veiled value creation: Illustrations from server software usage," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    13. Belenzon, Sharon & Schankerman, Mark, 2015. "Motivation and sorting of human capital in open innovation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58514, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Greenstein, Shane & Nagle, Frank, 2014. "Digital dark matter and the economic contribution of Apache," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 623-631.
    15. Belenzon, Sharon & Schankerman, Mark, 2008. "Motivation and sorting in open source software innovation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 51594, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Knut Blind & Torben Schubert, 2024. "Estimating the GDP effect of Open Source Software and its complementarities with R&D and patents: evidence and policy implications," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 466-491, April.
    17. Stefano Colombo & Luca Grilli & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2014. "Network Externalities, Incumbent’s Competitive Advantage and the Degree of Openness of Software Start-Ups," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 44(2), pages 175-200, August.
    18. Christian G. Asmussen & Kirsten Foss & Nicolai J. Foss & Peter G. Klein, 2021. "Economizing and strategizing: How coalitions and transaction costs shape value creation and appropriation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 413-434, February.
    19. Sharon Belenzon & Mark Schankerman, 2015. "Motivation and sorting of human capital in open innovation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(6), pages 795-820, June.
    20. Karim R. Lakhani & Hila Lifshitz-Assaf & Michael L. Tushman, 2013. "Open innovation and organizational boundaries: task decomposition, knowledge distribution and the locus of innovation," Chapters, in: Anna Grandori (ed.), Handbook of Economic Organization, chapter 19, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business Management; Political Science; Information Technology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M2 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mtp:titles:0262014632. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kristin Waites (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://mitpress.mit.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.