Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/44567 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
ETLA Discussion Papers No. 1135
Publisher: 
The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), Helsinki
Abstract: 
The primary findings of our study suggest that software firms that adopt the OSS-based business model are notably less productive than companies that merely offer proprietary software solutions. Our estimation results further show that the OSS business model adopters have not become notably less productive after beginning to supply OSS. Therefore, its seems that not the use of the OSS business model as such has reduced the OSS firms' labour productivity but the firms that employed the OSS business model during the sampled years were, on average, of lower labour productivity type. Though the OSS business model use has not substantially improved the performance of software firms, we find that the OSS business model adopters strategically using the source code made available by the OSS community as part of their new software products, have performed better in terms of labour productivity than other adopters of the OSS business model.
Subjects: 
open source software
business strategies
open innovation
labor productivity
JEL: 
D24
J24
L17
L86
O33
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.