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The Simple Economics of Open Source
"The Simple Economics of Open Source"
Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole
February 25, 2000
There has been a recent surge of interest in open source software
development, which involves developers at many different locations and
organizations sharing code to develop and refine programs. To an economist,
the behavior of individual programmers and commercial companies engaged in
open source projects is startling. This paper makes a preliminary
exploration of the economics of open source software. We highlight the
extent to which labor economics, especially the literature on "career
concerns," can explain many of these projects' features. Aspects of the
future of open source development process, however, remain somewhat
difficult to predict with "off-the-shelf" economic models.
http://www.people.hbs.edu/jlerner/simple.pdf