The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development by Josh Lerner, Mark Schankerman

By Josh Lerner, Mark Schankerman

Discussions of the commercial effect of open resource software program usually generate extra warmth than gentle. Advocates passionately assert some great benefits of open resource whereas critics decry its results. lacking from the controversy is rigorous monetary research and systematic financial proof of the effect of open resource on shoppers, corporations, and monetary improvement often. This publication fills that hole. within the Comingled Code, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, drawing on a brand new, large-scale database, convey that open resource and proprietary software program have interaction in occasionally unforeseen methods, and talk about the coverage implications of those findings. the recent information (from a variety of international locations in various levels of improvement) files the blending of open resource and proprietary software program: businesses promote proprietary software program whereas contributing to open resource, and clients greatly mix'n'match the 2. Lerner and Schankerman study the ways that software program differs from different applied sciences in selling fiscal improvement, what motivates participants and corporations to give a contribution to open resource initiatives, how builders and clients view the trade-offs among the types of software program, and the way govt rules can make sure that open resource competes successfully with proprietary software program and contributes to monetary improvement.

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Moreover those firms that have more trained personnel and more flexible organization structures are most likely to invest in information technology. • Bloom and co-authors (2009) argue that the impact of information technology on organizational hierarchies is more complex. In particular, if the primary goal of management structures is to acquire and transmit knowledge and information, then information technologies can enable workers to acquire more knowledge and become empowered. If instead technologies replace workers’ knowledge with directions from their managers, they can lead to centralization.

7 Personal computer use per capita, 1990 to 2006 sonal computers and the Internet, but many others exhibit a similar story) more slowly than richer countries. At the same time these figures show that these technologies (and many others) are being adopted quite rapidly in a number of developing and emerging economies. 6 reveals that Internet use in Mexico lags the United States by only a few years (whereas Mexico’s GDP per capita has historically lagged the corresponding level in the United States by many decades).

The first is an alumni effect. Because the code is freely available to all, it can be used in schools and universities for learning purposes; therefore it is already familiar to programmers. 3 Second, and as we have already noted, the cost of contributing to an open source project can be offset if the activity brings about a private benefit (the ability to fix bugs and customize the product to one’s own ends) for the programmer and her firm. Note again that this factor of cost reduction is directly linked to the openness of the source code.

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