Business Models and Strategies for Open Source Projects

Since its emergence in the mid-1980s through the protagonism of free software and open source movements, the concept of freely shareable technology has steadily established itself in the following decades to enter the 21st century as a leading industrial paradigm. From the original ambit of software technology, the principles of collaborative construction of publicly accessible knowledge grounding the open source paradigm have been extended to embrace any intellectual artifact made available under non-exclusive rights of utilization, development, and distribution. It is noteworthy, however, that whilst on one hand it is not difficult to enumerate advantages of the use of open source products by individuals and organizations-whether related to cost reduction, socio-technological inclusion, governance of technology development, security and privacy transparency, among others-on the other hand, it is not as immediate to identify their motivation to develop open source technology. While there may surely be initiatives driven by either ethical grounds, personal avocation, or public policies, those reasons alone do not explain the lasting success of many large community-driven projects, nor why large commercial enterprises massively invest in open source development. Business Models and Strategies for Open Source Projects investigates the rationales and the strategy underlying companies’ decisions to produce and release open source products as well as which business models have succeeded. Covering topics such as embedded systems, open source ecosystems, and software companies, this premier reference source is a valuable resource for entrepreneurs, business leaders and managers, students and educators of higher education, librarians, software developers, researchers, and academicians.