Half a Century of Public Software Institutions: Open Source as a Solution to Hold-Up Problem

Journal of Public Economic Theory

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 609-639

  Schwarz, Michael ^a   Takhteyev, Yuri ^b  

^a YAHOO RESEARCH   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955147429     PISSN: 10973923     EISSN: 14679779     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2010.01467.x     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. Abbate J. Inventing the Internet 2000, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press
2. Andreoni J. Leadership giving in charitable fundraising. Journal of Public Economic Theory 2006, 8(1):1-22.
3. Armer P. SHARE - A eulogy to cooperative effort. Annals of the History of Computing 1955/1980, 2(2):122-129.
4. Athey S, Ellison G. The dynamics of open source movements. 2006, A Working Paper
5. Backus J. The history of FORTRAN I, II, and III. Annals of the History of Computing 1979, 1(1):21-37.
6. Bagnoli M, Lipman B L. Provision of public goods: Fully implementing the core through private contributions. Review of Economic Studies 1989, 56:583-601.
7. Bergstrom T, Blume L, Varian H R. On the private provision of public goods. 1986, Ted Bergstrom, Paper 1986B, Department of Economics, UCSB
8. Bliss C, Nalebuff B. Dragon-slaying and ballroom dancing: The private supply of a public good. Journal of Public Economics 1984, 25:1-12.
9. Brooks F P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering 1975/1995, 2nd ed, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley Professional
10. Callahan M E, Anis N. Dr. File Finder's Guide to Shareware 1990, Berkeley, CA: McGraw-Hill
11. Campbell-Kelly M, Garcia-Swartz D D. Pragmatism not ideology: IBM's love affair with open source software. 2008, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1081613, SSRN Working Papers, last retrieved on October 30, 2008
12. Campbell-Kelly M. From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry 2003, Boston, MA, The MIT Press
13. Ceruzzi P. A History of Modern Computing 2003, 2nd ed, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press
14. The Final Report of the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works 1978, CONTU, Washington, DC, Library of Congress
15. Corbet J. Who wrote 2.6.20? LWN.net. 2007, http://lwn.net/Articles/222773/, last accessed October 30, 2008
16. Davidson C. The emergence of load-and-go systems for FORTRAN. Annals of the History of Computing 1984, 6(1):35-37.
17. Ghosh A, Mahdian M. Charity auctions on social networks. 2008, Working Paper, Yahoo! Research
18. Ghosh R A, Feller J, Fitzgerald B, Hissam S A, Lakhani K R. Understanding free software developers: Findings from the FLOSS study. Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software 2005, 23-46. eds, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press
19. Thank GNUs. GNU's Bulletin 1988, 1(4). http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull4.html, GNU, last accessed October 30, 2008
20. Thank GNUs. GNU's Bulletin 1989a, 1(5). http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull5.html, GNU, last accessed October 30, 2008
21. Thank GNUs. GNU's Bulletin 1989b, 1(7). http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull7.html, GNU, last accessed October 30, 2008
22. Graham S J H, Mowery D C, Cohen W M, Merrill S A. Intellectual property protection in the US software industry. Patents in the Knowledge-Based Economy 2003, eds, Washington, DC, National Academies Press
23. Greenwald I. RAND recollections. 2008, http://users.adelphia.net/~irwingreenwald/memoir.html, last retrieved August 5, 2008
24. Guttman J M. Understanding collective action: Matching behavior. American Economic Review 1978, 68:251-255.
25. Hars A, Ou S. Working for free?- Motivations of participating in open source projects. 2001, 7014. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2001.927045, p, Available at
26. Hart O, Moore J. Property rights and the nature of the firm. Journal of Political Economy 1990, 98(6):1119-1158.
27. Fact sheet & background: Roadrunner smashes the petaflop barrier. 2008, http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24405.wss, IBM, IBM press release, last accessed October 31, 2008
28. Johnson J P. Open source software: private provision of a public good. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy 2002, 11(4):637-662.
29. Johnson J P. Collaboration, peer review and open source software. Information Economics and Policy 2006, 18:477-497.
30. Katz M, Shapiro C. Network externalities, competition and compatibility. American Economic Review 1985, 75(3):424-440.
31. Katz M, Shapiro C. Technology adoption in the presence of network externalities. Journal of Political Economy 1986, 94:822-841.
32. Klein B, Crawford R G, Alchian A A. Vertical integration, appropriable rents, and the competitive contracting process. Journal of Law and Economics 1978, 21(2):297-326.
33. Kroah-Hartman G, Corbet J, Mcpherson A. Linux kernel development (April 2008): How fast it is going, who is doing it, what they are doing, and who is sponsoring it. 2008, http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php, Last retrieved October 30, 2008
34. Lai E. Size matters: Yahoo claims 2-petabyte database is world's biggest, busiest, Computerworld. 2008, http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9087918, accessed on November 1, 2008
35. Lakhani K R, Wolf R G, Feller J, Fitzgerald B, Hissam S A, Lakhani K R. Why hackers do what they do: Understanding motivation and effort in free/open source software projects. Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software 2005, 3-22. eds, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, pp
36. Lerner J, Pathak P, Tirole J. The dynamics of open-source contributors. American Economic Review 2006, 96(2):114-118.
37. Lerner J, Tirole J. Some simple economics of open source. Journal of Industrial Economics 2002, 50(2):197-233.
38. Lerner J, Tirole J. The scope of open source licensing. Journal of Law Economics and Organization 2005, 21(1):20-56.
39. Levy S. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution 1984/2001, London: Penguin Books
40. Mckusick M K, Dibona C, Ockman S. Twenty years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-owned to freely redistributable. Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution 1999, eds, Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly
41. Menell P S. Envisioning copyright law's digital future. 2002, http://ssrn.com/abstract=328561, SSRN Working Papers, last accessed on October 30, 2008
42. Moody G. Rebel Code: The Inside Story of Linux and the Open Source Revolution 2001, Cambridge, MA, Perseus Publishing
43. Independent auditors' report and consolidated financial statements. 2006, http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2006-audited-financial-statement.pdf, MOZILLA FOUNDATION, last accessed April 21, 2009
44. North D. Structure and Change in Economic History 1981, New York, Norton and Company
45. North D. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance 1990, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
46. O'mahony S, Feller J, Fitzgerald B, Hissam S A, Lakhani K R. Non-profit foundations and their role in community-firm software collaboration. Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software 2005, 23-46. eds, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press
47. Parnas D L. On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Communications of the ACM 1972, 15(12):1053-1058.
48. Raymond E S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary 1999/2001, Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly
49. Ritchie D M, Thompson K. The UNIX time-sharing system. Communications of the ACM 1974, 17(7):365-375.
50. Salomon D. Assemblers and Loaders 1992, New York, Ellis Horwood
51. Salus P. A Quarter Century of UNIX 1994, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
52. Schotchmer S. Innovation and Incentives 2006, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press
53. Shell D. The SHARE 709 system: A cooperative effort. Journal of the ACM 1959, 6(2):123-127.
54. Stallman R. New Unix implementation, a message sent to net.unix-wizards,net.usoft. 1983, http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html, archived at, last accessed October 30, 2008
55. Stallman R, Gay J. The GNU manifesto. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman 1984/2002, 31-39. ed, Boston, MA, GNU Press, pp
56. Stallman R, Gay J. Free software definition. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman 1996/2002, 41-43. ed, Boston, MA, GNU Press, pp
57. Stein J. Conversations among competitors. 2007, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1008328, SSRN Working Papers, last accessed on October 30, 2008
58. Stern S. Do scientists pay to be scientists?. Management Science 2004, 50(6):835-853.
59. Tanenbaum A. Some notes on the " Who wrote Linux" kerfuffle. 2004, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/, Release 1.5, last accessed October 30, 2008
60. TIOBE programming community index for April 2009. 2009, http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html, TIOBE, last accessed April 22, 2009
61. Torvalds L. Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary 2001, London: Harper Business
62. Varian H. A solution to the problem of externalities and public goods when agents are well informed. American Economic Review 1994, 84:1278-1293.
63. Von Hippel E. Economics of product development by users: The impact of " sticky" local information. Management Science 1998, 44(5):629-644.
64. Von Hippel E. Horizontal innovation networks - by and for users. Industrial and Corporate Change 2007, 16(2):293-315.
65. Weber S. The Success of Open Source 2005, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press
66. Williams S. Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software 2002, Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly
67. Williamson O. Markets and Hierarchies 1975, New York, Free Press
68. Williamson O. Transaction cost economics: The governance of contractual relations. Journal of Law and Economics 1979, 22:233-261.