Commercial open source software (COSS) products --- privately developed software based on publicly available source code --- represent a rapidly growing, multi-billion-dollar market. A unique aspect of competition in the COSS market is that many open source licenses require firms to make certain...

This series of discussions presents commentaries and a rejoinder on the economic perspectives on branding arising from Moorthy (Moorthy S. (2012) Can brand extension signal product quality? Marketing Sci. 31(5):756-770)

This paper asks whether brand extension can serve as a signal of product quality given that it costs less than a new brand. (Existing literature has assumed either that brand extension is cost-neutral or that it costs more.) I show that it can as a perfect Bayesian equilibrium, but the argument...