@conference {556, title = {Assessing Innovation in the Software Sector: Proprietary vs. FOSS Production Mode. Preliminary Evidence from the Italian Case}, booktitle = {OSS2008: Open Source Development, Communities and Quality (IFIP 2.13)}, series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing}, volume = {275/2008}, year = {2008}, month = {2008///}, pages = {325 - 331}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, chapter = {29}, abstract = {Innovation in the software sector is a widely debated issue. Which are the most important dimensions to assess innovation in this field? Can we measure innovative processes carried out by software companies and what kind of innovation do they develop? Are FOSS solutions more innovative than proprietary ones? These are the research questions we endeavor to answer in this paper providing some empirical evidence, obtained using an original methodology of collecting experts{\textquoteright} evaluations on the innovation level of 134 solutions provided by a group of Italian Small and Medium Enterprises. }, issn = {978-0-387-09683-4}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09684-1_29}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Assessing\%20Innovation\%20in\%20the\%20Software\%20Sector.pdf}, author = {Dario Lorenzi and Cristina Rossi} } @article {flosswp332, title = {Do firms take part in the projects of the OS community. Some preliminary evidence and a research agenda}, year = {2007}, month = {January}, abstract = {The Open Source (OS) software has progressively gained economic importance in recent years, and more and more commercial firms are getting involved, to various extents, in the OS movement. While a number of studies have investigated motivations and business models of OS-based software companies, very few works have examined whether and how firms actively participate to open projects. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the role and the activities of software houses in community developed projects. The research also proposes an original methodology of large-scale primary data collection from OS project repositories and linked Web sites. The findings show how different today???s OS movement is from its origins and how important firm involvement has become, not only numerically but also for the deepness of its impact on community projects. Finally, further research developments are suggested.}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/paper_firm_involvement_MIT.pdf}, author = {Andrea Bonaccorsi and Dario Lorenzi and Monica Merito and Cristina Rossi} } @booklet {488, title = {Innovativeness of software solutions: evidence from an alternative methodology. Comparing Free/Open Source and proprietary products}, year = {2007}, month = {Dec}, abstract = {The issue of innovation processes taking place in the software sector is currently widely debated. Challenging questions arise about what products/services have to be considered innovative, and whether a specific artefact is innovative or not. In this framework, the widespread success of the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) put forward new research issues, dealing with whether and how programs developed according to the new production paradigm turn out to be more innovative than traditional ones. In this framework, this paper aims at contributing to the literature by addressing three main research questions: (i) are software solutions produced by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) innovative? (ii) What kinds of innovations are implemented? And, finally, (iii) are programs based on FOSS more innovative than proprietary ones?Basing on a sample of 134 software solutions produced by Italian SMEs and using an original methodology to asses the problem of evaluating innovation in the software field, we provides some first insights of what emerges if we set aside the traditional innovation indicators and endower to build alternative metrics, specifically developed to target the complexity of the innovation processes in the software markets.}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/lorenzi_rossi_MIT_20071220.pdf , https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Alexy_Henkel_-_Promoting_the_Penguin_-_SSRN.pdf}, author = {Dario Lorenzi and Cristina Rossi} } @conference {666, title = {Toward a New Industrial Organization? OSS in Economic and Managerial Perspective}, booktitle = {OSS2007: Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation (IFIP 2.13)}, series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing }, volume = {234/2007}, year = {2007}, month = {2007///}, pages = {377 - 379}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, chapter = {50}, abstract = {At present, an more and more users are running Open Source software (OSS) on their systems. Major companies, like IBM, Oracle, or Sun Microsystems, have now started to make significant investments in developing open communities and creating a portfolio of systems incorporating OSS applications into their design. Meanwhile, an increasing number of firms are entering the market by offering OSS-based solutions to their customers, often supplying a mix of proprietary and open solutions through hybrid business models. In this context, economists and management scientists are now moving beyond the state of puzzlement that has driven much of the initial attention towards OSS. Located in the context of OSS2007 in order to foster close and fruitful interactions with scholars from various other disciplines, this workshop aims at contributing to the current evolutions of the economic and managerial research agendas about OSS, and thus to provide, first, an assessment of where we {\textemdash} economics and management scholars - are about OSS, and, second, an analysis of the renewed directions in which we should consider inquiring further in the near future, focusing notably on business, production, diffusion and innovation models. }, issn = {978-0-387-72485-0}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_50}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Toward\%20a\%20new\%20indusctial\%20Org.pdf}, author = {Dalle, Jean and Cristina Rossi and Francesco Rullani} } @conference {692, title = {How is it possible to profit from innovation in the absence of any appropriability?}, booktitle = {OSS2006: Open Source Systems (IFIP 2.13)}, series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing }, volume = {203/2006}, year = {2006}, month = {2006///}, pages = {333 - 334}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {Open Source Software (OSS) represents an {\textquotedblleft}open innovation{\textquotedblright} paradigm based on knowledge produced and shared by developers and users. New findings from a large survey of European software companies show that: (i) the OSS business model is currently involving almost one third of the industry, although with different intensity; (ii) compared with pure proprietary software producers, OSS firms have a broader product portfolio and are more diversified; moreover, (iii) OSS firms provide more complementary services to their customers; (iv) over time OSS firms increase the share of OS turnover out of the total turnover, becoming more and more OSS oriented; (v) both NOSS and OSS firms do not consider appropriability as a crucial requirement for innovation and do not consider the lack of appropriability as an obstacle to profitability. }, issn = {978-0-387-34225-2}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34226-5_33}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/How\%20is\%20it\%20possible\%20to\%20profit.pdf}, author = {Andrea Bonaccorsi and Lucia Piscitello and Monica Merito and Cristina Rossi} } @article {flosswp204, title = {Intrinsic motivations and profit-oriented firms in Open Source software. Do firms practise what they preach?}, year = {2005}, month = {February}, abstract = {A growing body of economic literature is exploring the incentives of the agents involved in the Open Source movement. However, most empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect firms that do business with Open Source software (Open Source firms). This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the incentives of firms that engage in Open Source activities. Data on firms? motivations were collected by a large-scale survey conducted on 146 Italian companies supplying Open Source (OS) solutions and show that intrinsic, community-based incentives do play a role. Nevertheless, these positive attitudes towards the values of the OS community, which are quite surprising by profit-oriented firms, are not in general put into practise. Discrepancy between attitudes and behaviours is a widely investigated phenomenon in social psychology literature. We explore its pattern in our sample, find that it does not concern all the respondents, and single out a group of firms adopting a more consistent behaviour. Our results are in line with the literature on individual motivations in organisations and Open Source business models .}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/rossi_motivations.pdf}, author = {Cristina Rossi} } @conference {803, title = {Open Source firms: from community to business}, booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems }, year = {2005}, pages = {362-363}, abstract = {A large body of literature is now addressing the Open Source (OS) phenomenon. Economic scholars have deeply investigated the incentives of people working within OS community projects; the software production models in absence of explicit hierarchical structures; the successful dissemination of OS programs in environments dominated by proprietary standards; the peculiarities in the management of intellectual property within the OS framework. Theoretical contributions have coupled with the collection of extensive empirical evidence mainly through surveys taken on individual developers. Nowadays a new trend is shaping the OS movement: more and more firms are entering the market by offering software solutions based on the new paradigm (Open Source firms).}, keywords = {business, COMMUNITY, firms, Open Source firms}, url = {http://pascal.case.unibz.it/handle/2038/1265}, author = {Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi} } @conference {758, title = {Open Source software, intrinsic motivations and profit-oriented firms. Do not firms practise what they preach?}, booktitle = {OSS2005: Open Source Systems }, year = {2005}, pages = {241-245}, abstract = {This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the incentives of firms that engage in Open Source activities. Data collected by a survey on 146 Italian companies supplying OS solutions (Open Source firms) show that (surprisingly) intrinsic, communitybased incentives do play a role but are not, in general, put into practise. The discrepancy between attitudes and behaviours is investigated and firms adopting more consistent behaviours are singled out. Our results are in line with the literature on business models of firms entering the Open Source field.}, author = {Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi} } @proceedings {1185, title = {Contributing to OS Projects. A Comparison between Individual and Firms}, year = {2004}, note = {"Following the approach used in previous surveys on Open Source developers, we prepared an on-line questionnaire;"}, pages = {18-22}, abstract = {This paper studies the contributions software firms make to Open Source (OS) projects. Our goal is to ascertain whether they follow the same regularity of pattern seen for individual programmer An exhaustive empirical analysis was carried out using data on project membership1 , project coordination and the contributions made by 146 Italian firms that do business with OS software. We compare our findings with the results of the surveys taken on OS programmers. The availability of the data gathered by Hertel et al. ([10]) on 141 developers of the Linux kernel allowed a direct comparison to be carried out between the two sets2 .}, keywords = {Survey}, attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/19-23.pdf}, author = {Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi} }