This paper examines open source software development in a competitive environment. The quality of open source software improves over time based upon contributions by firms and users. A firm's decision to contribute is interesting because it also augments competitors' software quality in future...

We examine optimal control decisions regarding pricing, network size and hiring strategy in the context of open source software development. Opening the source code to a software product often implies that consumers would not pay for the software product itself. However, revenues may be...