Author(s)
Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz
Source
Working Paper, 2008
Summary
This paper examines the historical evidence as to why a large commercial firm supported open source software.
Policy Relevance
Policymakers should be careful not to idealize open source; firms like IBM become involved in open source for familiar economic reasons.
Main Points
- Open source software lets users change the code to suit their own needs; open source code under the General Public License (GPL) must be distributed free.
- IBM is the world’s second largest seller of commercial software, so some are puzzled as to why it supports “free” software.
- The business history of IBM shows it adapts to change for practical reasons.
- During the half a century that IBM has made software, it has delivered many combinations of free software combined with commercial software, or code that users can access combined with proprietary code.
- Should open source grow markedly, it could eat into IBM’s revenues, but IBM would have time to adapt.
