Open source software: from open science to new marketing models

This research report analyses several issues on the economics and management of Open Source Software(OSS). It offers an historical description of the emergence of OSS and of heterogeneous types of actors involvedin the OSS phenomenon. From a theoretical perspective the paper discusses some crucial topics: theorganization and performance of the development process in open source and traditional proprietary models, theincentives to innovation in different regimes of intellectual property protection, the ingredients of businessmodels based on open source software. From an empirical perspective it presents some data on the diffusion ofopen source software in some segments of the software market and develops a detailed comparison of opensource and proprietary licensing models, also drawing some implications on the use of different types of opensource licences in the commercial market