TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lerner,Josh
AU  - Tirole,Jean
TI  - The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source and Beyond
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10956
PY  - 2004
Y2  - December 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10956
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10956.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Josh Lerner
Harvard Business School
Rock Center 214
Boston, MA 02163
Tel: 617/495-6065
Fax: 617/496-7357
E-Mail: jlerner@hbs.edu

Jean Tirole
Institut d'Economie Industrielle
Bureau MF529 - Bat. F
21 allees de Brienne
31000 Toulouse
FRANCE
Tel: 33-561-128642
E-Mail: jean.tirole@tse-fr.eu
AB  - This paper reviews our understanding of the growing open source movement. We highlight how many aspects of open source software appear initially puzzling to an economist. As we have acknowledge, our ability to answer confidently many of the issues raised here questions is likely to increase as the open source movement itself grows and evolves. At the same time, it is heartening to us how much of open source activities can be understood within existing economic frameworks, despite the presence of claims to the contrary. The labor and industrial organization literatures provide lenses through which the structure of open source projects, the role of contributors, and the movement's ongoing evolution can be viewed.
ER  -