I consider a Vickrey-Salop model of spatial product differentiation with quasi-linear utility functions and contrast two modes of production, the proprietary model where entrepreneurs sell software to the users, and the open source model where users participate in software development. I show...

Standard form contracts are pervasive. Many legal academics believe that they are unfair. Some scholars and some courts have argued that sellers with market power or facing little competitive pressure may impose one-sided standard form terms that limit their obligation to consumers. This paper...

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...

This article discusses the implications of the intellectual property system as applied to software, especially the use of patents, for innovation in developing countries; it also assesses the possible consequences of the appearance of free software and a new intellectual property system in the...

This paper addresses the seemingly implausible project of establishing a "generic" organizational information system. This is an apparent contradiction: on the one hand, we are told of the diversity of specific organizational contexts and on the other, we often find the same standardized...

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free...

This comment analyzes the recent Supreme Court case, Microsoft v. AT&T and attacks the Court's reasoning behind its holding to limit patent protection of software. The paper examines the history of 271(f) with respect to software and questions whether a fundamental misunderstanding of software...

Software patents not only do no promote innovation, they instead reduce it. The U.S. Executive branch has recommended against recognizing software patents, and the Supreme Court has never rejected a test (its physical-transformation test) that would invalidate pure business method and software...

An important provision in each of the final judgments in the government's Microsoft antitrust case requires Microsoft "make available" to software developers the communications protocols that Windows client operating systems use to interoperate "natively" (that is, without adding software) with...

A common business strategy to promote product adoption in software industry is to provide a free trial version with limited functionalities of the commercial product to increase the installed user base. The increase of user base will lead to higher value of the software because of positive...