Competing on Open Source: Strategies and Practise

This paper seeks to address the following issues: How do firms compete with open source? What resources become critical in managing their growth? What strategies do they adopt to co-exist with dominant proprietary software firms? How do they interface with communities of practice to exploit network externalities? What strategies do they adopt to lock-in developers? Based on a multiple case analysis the authors seek to draw initial conclusions about the key strategic aspects that underlie the open source initiatives. Finally they describe how for-profit firms can establish and sustain open source practice.