This study sheds light on the relatively recently emerged new business models employing open source activities in the software industry. We analyze data from 73 Finnish OSS companies' product type (i.e. proprietary vs. OSS product) and license type (i.e. the copyleft vs. non-copyleft licenses)choices. Our data indicate that firm ownership structure has a major influence on software firms' business strategies. Family owned firms tend to rely on the traditional proprietary software in their product selection, whereas diffusely held companies are more likely to supply OSS products. We also find that more service oriented firms are likely to offer more complementary products and further supply their products more often under the OS licenses. Moreover, the market trends concerning a firm's software products affect the license type decisions of the software firms. Consistent with the international data on the dominance of the Apache server that is released under the non-copyleft license, we find that servers are more likely to be licensed under the non-copyleft license. Our estimation results further suggest that a more restrictive form of open source licenses, the copyleft license, is used more often in those companies that have participated in open source software development projects. This finding is consistent with earlier studies that have found that more than 70% of the OSS development projects employ the GPL copyleft license.
[1]
Jesper B. Sørensen,et al.
Aging, Obsolescence, and Organizational Innovation
,
2000
.
[2]
Steven Weber,et al.
The Success of Open Source
,
2004
.
[3]
Andrea Bonaccorsi,et al.
Altruistic Individuals, Selfish Firms? The Structure of Motivation in Open Source Software
,
2004,
First Monday.
[4]
Neil Gandal,et al.
The Determinants of Output Per Contributor in Open Source Projects: An Empirical Examination
,
2004
.
[5]
Josh Lerner,et al.
The Simple Economics of Open Source
,
2000
.
[6]
Andrea Bonaccorsi,et al.
Licensing Schemes in the Production and Distribution of Open Source Software: An Empirical Investigation
,
2003
.
[7]
R. Cyert,et al.
Theory of the Firm
,
1966
.
[8]
M. C. Jensen,et al.
Harvard Business School; SSRN; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); Harvard University - Accounting & Control Unit
,
1976
.
[9]
Richard Schmalensee,et al.
Handbook of Industrial Organization
,
1989
.