The usefulness of a software product becomes obvious to consumers only after they get to experience it and, upon … experiencing it, they may reach different conclusions regarding its true value. We examine the problem of designing free software … rate of learning. At moderate rates, the software manufacturer pursues a dual strategy of offering a longer trial as well …

Commercial open source software (COSS) products --- privately developed software based on publicly available 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 generated from complementary products. A software firm may be willing to open the … source code to its software if it stands to build a network for its complementary products. The rapid network growth is …

increasing prevalence of non-exclusive software gives rise to indirect network effects that exist between users of competing and … incompatible hardware platforms. This is because software non-exclusivity, like hardware compatibility, allows a software firm to …'s software on all firms' installed bases. We look for evidence of these market-wide network effects by estimating a model of …

Many software firms offer a fully functional version of their products free of charge, for a limited trial time, to … ease consumers’ uncertainty about the functionalities of their products and to help the diffusion of their new software … condition under which software firms should introduce the time-locked free trial software, and finds the optimal free trial time …

This research develops a micro-economic model to study the impact of support forums on the software industry. Motivated … on a software vendor. Since these forums provide an alternative, free source for obtaining software support, one might …

There has been a recent surge of interest in open source software development, which involves developers at many … exploration of the economics of open source software. We highlight the extent to which labor economics, especially the literature … listing interesting research questions related to open source software …

Numerous studies examine potential facilitators and inhibitors of open source software (OSS) adoption at the firm level …