Abstract

The first urgent question for any scholar willing to study the Open Source (OS) movement has been clearly put by Glass (1999, 104): I don’t know who these crazy people are who want to write, read and even revise all that code without being paid anything for it at all. A growing body of economic literature has been addressing the motivations at the basis of the participation in the OS movement since when the new paradigm has become successful and triggered the entrance on the market of firms offering Open Source based products and services (Open Source firms). However, most of the empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect companies that adopt Open Source business models. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the incentives of the firms that engage in OS activities. Findings on firms’ motivations are compared.