Institutions, Culture, and Open Source
Abstract: So-called open source software (OSS) is marked by free access to the software and its source code. Copyright-based OSS licenses permit users to use, change, improve and redistribute the software, which is designed and developed in a public, collaborative manner. High quality OSS-products like Linux, Apache etc. are developed by thousands of volunteers, who often do not receive direct monetary reward. Hence, OSS seems to be an example of a ‘private provision of a public good’, and some argue that OSS is a ‘new intellectual property paradigm’ for the digital economy. Thus, OSS has been in the focus of economic research for some years. However, it is still not known which institutional and cultural factors favor OSS development. For this reason, we have performed a cross-country study of how the number of OSS developers per inhabitants of a country depends on institutional and cultural factors. We made use of data about OSS developers at SourceForge. Regarding country-specific factors we took into account protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs), regulation, social capital, openness to novelty, degree of individualism of a society and its attitude toward competition. We found that a culture of individualism/self-determination and of interpersonal trust is in favor of OSS as well as openness to scientific progress. The attitude towards competition was never significant, but less regulated countries have more OSS. Furthermore, protection of IPRs has a positive impact.
