The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development

by Josh Lerner

Discussions of the economic impact of open source software often generatemore heat than light. Advocates passionately assert the benefits of open sourcewhile critics decry its effects. Missing from the debate is rigorous economicanalysis and systematic economic evidence of the impact of open source on consumers, firms, and economic development in general. This book fills that gap. In TheComingled Code, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, drawing on a new, large-scaledatabase, show that open source and proprietary software interact in sometimesunexpected ways, and discuss the policy implications of these findings. The new data(from a range of countries in varying stages of development) documents the mixing ofopen source and proprietary firms sell proprietary software whilecontributing to open source, and users extensively mix and match the two. Lerner andSchankerman examine the ways in which software differs from other technologies inpromoting economic development, what motivates individuals and firms to contributeto open source projects, how developers and users view the trade-offs between thetwo kinds of software, and how government policies can ensure that open sourcecompetes effectively with proprietary software and contributes to economicdevelopment.

Mass Market Paperback

First published September 24, 2010

Reviews

[Jory Carson-burson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a very full economic analysis of different approaches to software development. At this point it’s a bit dated so the study should be conducted again, but I think this really contributes to how people should be thinking about total cost of ownership of different kinds of software, as well as the role of standards.

[Stephen Walton]

I've wanted to read a good analysis of the affects of open source for years. This was that, and the author made some really interesting discoveries, some that were very surprising. It reads like a research paper though. Expect most of it to be analyzing how he got the data, the statistical methods used, and the graphs, and the raw data summaries. Most of what he concludes is probably common sense for a software developer, but still, it's a worthwhile read if software is your profession.