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...

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...

The rivalry between developers of open source and proprietary software encourages open source developers to court users and respond to their needs. If the open source developer wants to promote her own open source standard and solutions, she may choose liberal license terms such as those of the...

This paper traces the history of TeX, the open source typesetting program. TeX was an early and very successful open source project that imposed its standards in a particularly competitive environment and inspired many advances in the typesetting industry. Developed over three decades, TeX came...

This paper traces the history of the development and use of the Open Source TeX typesetting program. This software was developed over three decades and came into competition with a variety of open-source and proprietary alternatives. TeX was an early and very successful open-source project that...