The mythical man-month (anniversary ed.)
The mythical man-month (anniversary ed.)
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Policy recommendations for public administrators on free and open source software usage
Telematics and Informatics
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This paper presents a model for understanding the behaviour of agents using and/or contributing to open source software. The model illustrates the behaviour of agents under three license regimes: (1) the GPL, (2) the BSD and (3) the Microsoft EULA. The latter license is not an open source license and is included as a reference as well as an example of a general situation where users do not contribute source code.The model uses economic theory of externalities and opportunity cost as a measure of agents' costs. The basic premise is that agents will only participate in developments if there is a net benefit.Agents are divided into firms and individuals, which can be either maintainers or user-developers. A maintainer is an agent responsible for releasing new versions of a program and a user-developer is an agent who uses a program but may also become a developer. It is observed through the model that the three licenses induce different incentives and dynamics for maintainers and user-developers and the paper explains, from an economic standpoint, the mechanisms that ensure that programs are developed and maintained under the three license regimes.