American Economic Review Vol. 96 No. 2 2006

The Dynamics of Open-Source Contributors

Josh Lerner¹; Parag A. Pathak²; Jean Tirole³

¹ Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Rock Center, Boston, MA 02163, and NBER. · ² Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Baker Library 420E, Boston, MA 02163. · ³ Universite des Sciences Sociales, Manufacture des Tabacs, Aile Jean-Jacques Laffont, Accueil MF 404, F-31000, Toulouse, France, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Abstract

There are substantial differences between open-source projects and traditional innovative efforts in private firms. Private firms usually pay their workers, direct and manage their efforts, and control the output and intellectual property created. In an open-source project, however, a body of original material is made publicly available for others to use, under certain conditions. Contributions to open-source projects are made by a diverse array of individual contributors, and for-profit corporations, who must often agree to make enhancements to the original material widely available for nominal cost. This paper empirically examines the dynamics of contributions to open-source software projects. We show that the share of corporate contributions in a sample of approximately 100 open-source projects between 2001 and 2004 is greater in larger and growing projects.

DOI

10.1257/000282806777211874

Volume

96

Issue

2

Pages

114-118

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

Cite

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