Computation at the edge of chaos: phase transitions and emergent computation
CNLS '89 Proceedings of the ninth annual international conference of the Center for Nonlinear Studies on Self-organizing, Collective, and Cooperative Phenomena in Natural and Artificial Computing Networks on Emergent computation
Price-war dynamics in a free-market economy of software agents
ALIFE Proceedings of the sixth international conference on Artificial life
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Network Effect in Complex Market Structures
WI-IATW '07 Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Workshops
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This article describes the potential impact that free (i.e., open source) software can have on an existing commercial software market. A model for the software market is constructed in terms of autonomous agents, which represent the users, the companies, and the free software providers. The model specifies a reservation price for each user agent and develops a gradient learning strategy for revenue-maximizing company agents. Simulations explore parameters such as the demand distribution, and the relative importance of market share, advertising and random effects in product visibility. Results from the case without free software show a prevalence of monopolies, which is consistent with other studies of high-technology market economics. The effects of free software are not uniform, but are highly parameter dependent. A "capture region" is found in which free software eventually dominates the market.