Altruistic Individuals, Selfish Firms? The Structure of Motivation in Open Source Software

6 Pages Posted: 3 Sep 2003

See all articles by Andrea Bonaccorsi

Andrea Bonaccorsi

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa - Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM)

Cristina Rossi Lamastra

Politecnico di Milano

Abstract

A growing body of economic literature is addressing the incentives of the individuals that take part to the Open Source movement. However, empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect firms that do business with Open Source software (OSS). During 2002, we conducted a large-scale survey on 146 Italian firms supplying Open Source solutions in Italy. In this paper our data on firms' motivations are compared with data collected by the surveys made on individual programmers. We aim at analysing the role played by different classes of motivations (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different groups of agents in Open Source activities.

Suggested Citation

Bonaccorsi, Andrea and Rossi Lamastra, Cristina, Altruistic Individuals, Selfish Firms? The Structure of Motivation in Open Source Software. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=433620 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.433620

Andrea Bonaccorsi

Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa - Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM) ( email )

Piazza Martiri della Liberta, 33
Pisa, I-56127
Italy
+39 05 088 3323 (Phone)
+39 05 088 3344 (Fax)

Cristina Rossi Lamastra (Contact Author)

Politecnico di Milano ( email )

Piazza Leonardo da Vinci
Milan, Milano 20100
Italy
+390223993972 (Phone)
+390223992710 (Fax)

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