September 28, 2022
12:50 - 13:50
Louvain la Neuve - CORE CO35
Robin Ng (CORE) will present his latest working paper, entitled "Open Source Competition".
Abstract
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Attracting more contributors to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) involves the following trade-off. On the one hand, the overall quality of the software increases with the number and diversity of contributions – a positive vertical differentiation effect. On the other hand, including more contributors may drive the characteristics of the software closer to those of existing products, thereby intensifying the competition with these products – a negative horizontal differentiation effect. This explains how retaining excessive control over an FOSS can be a major source of hindrance its development and growth. When taking into account how firms may choose to monetise an open source product, I show that horizontal differentiation: (i) lowers the barrier to entry of firms; (ii) encourages firms to exert larger effort in development. I show all this in a minimal working environment with costless effort and linear transportation cost.
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This session will take place, as usual, in room c.035 at CORE.