2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Analyzing the incentives of the voluntary development of Open Source Softwares: An approach from the theory of public good provision
| Project/Area Number |
24730165
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Research Field |
Economic theory
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| Research Institution | Hosei University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
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| Keywords | 公共財 / 自発的供給 / オープン・ソース・ソフトウェア |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
In the real world, there are many voluntary projects to develop Open Source Softwares (OSS) in which many software developers participate and by the voluntary development activities, many high-quality OSS are provided. However, since OSS satisfy the properties of nonrivalry and nonexcludability of consumption, they are public goods. According to the standard theory of public goods, public good provision suffers from the free-rider problem and public goods are under-provided. The standard theory seemingly cannot explain the phenomena of OSS development. We address why many high-quality OSS are provided although they are public goods through the public good provision theory. We show that, to some extent, the strong complementarity between OSS and its applications and multifunctionality of OSS have a role to intensify the incentive of voluntary contribution to OSS.
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| Free Research Field |
経済理論
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