Monday 11 August 2014

Science Direct

Volume 32, Issue 1, January 2003, Pages 1–11

‘Libre’ software: turning fads into institutions?

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Abstract

The article presents an economic analysis of Libre software and of its sustainability as a new economic model for software. We underline the role of Libre software development communities and analyze incentives for both kernel and obscure developers. We emphasize the role of the so-called ‘public’ licenses to provide an appropriate institutional framework. We show that several features of Libre software also allow it to improve faster than proprietary software, and therefore to achieve strong market performance when competing against existing standards, even when proprietary software producers react. We illustrate our point using a simple local and global interaction model to study the technological competition between Linux and Windows on the server operating system (OS) market. We finally argue that if sufficient initial momentum could be created through public intervention Libre software could turn from a fad into an efficient economic institution to correct inefficiencies due to network externalities.

Keywords

  • Libre software
  • Linux
  • Community
  • Incentives
  • Network effects
  • Network externalities
  • Technological competition
Corresponding author. Tel.: +33-49085995; fax: +33-149085996.
1
Tel.: +33-298001245; fax: +33-298001173.

Assessing the quality of auction


Assessing the quality of auction Web sites

2Author(s)
Barnes, S.J. ; Sch. of Manage., Bath Univ., UK ; Vidgen, R.T.
WebQual is an instrument for assessing the quality of Internet sites from the perspective of the customer. Earlier versions of WebQual focused on information and interaction quality. This paper reports on a new version of WebQual that incorporates three quality dimensions: information quality, interaction quality and Web site design quality. WebQual is applied in the domain of Internet auctions and the results are used to assess the reliability of the instrument for assessing the quality of Web sites. Three auction sites (Amazon, eBay and QXL) are evaluated through an intervention that involves buying and selling at auction. The results of the intervention are analyzed quantitatively to assess the validity of the WebQual instrument and supplemented by qualitative data that is used to consider the relative merits of the three sites evaluated.

Published in:

System Sciences, 2001. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on

Date of Conference:

3-6 Jan. 2001

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