MORERO HERNÁN ALEJANDRO
Congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
The international surveys of FLOSS (free/libre open source software) firms
Autor/es:
MORERO, HERNÁN ALEJANDRO; FERNÁNDEZ, VALENTINA; SONNENBERG, JOSEFINA; VÉLEZ, JUAN GABRIEL
Lugar:
Buenos Aires
Reunión:
Congreso; International Council of Small Business 2017 World Conference; 2017
Institución organizadora:
International Council of Small Business
Resumen:
The substantial growth of the software and IT services sector in Argentina during the last decade (OPSSI, 2015) makes its study to be of great importance in terms of development. This arises not only because of the relevance of growth a knowledge-intensive sector that allow an economic emancipation of the export of agricultural commodities, but mainly because of their capacity as industrializing industry for their potential to exert cross-effects of productivity growth over other industries or firms (Lavarello and Sarabia, 2015).
From their birth, the Free Software movement has transformed the software industry. The Free Software movement arose in the academic sphere (mainly, in the MIT) in the early eighties as a reaction the proprietary software production. Richard Stallman leaded this reaction, creating the GNU General Public License, a way to license software guaranteeing the freedom to use, study, share, copy and modify the software. This license imposes that further products must enjoy the same license, and it is elaborated, supported and defended by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a nonprofit institution that gives a legal framework for the FLOSS development (Stallman, 1983). By the end of 1990?s, Eric Raymond stablished the technological and economical virtues of the open source development model but still allowing a business model based on proprietary software (Raymond, 1999). Since their beginnings, FLOSS has challenged the business models and strategies both for SMEs and for Large Multinational Corporations (Dahlander & Magnusson, 2005).
One of the major issues where economics failed to understand is how firms operate when their developments and innovations are open, and many times free of charge. Moreover, how a firm, as FLOSS companies, can be motivated to collaborate in community projects, as long later their innovations can be used by potential competitors. There are two ways though FLOSS firms can obtain revenues: by the distribution, implementation and sale of FLOSS (both developed by the community, as developed internally), and by selling services grounded on FLOSS (again, both developed by other members of the community or internally by the firm).
In the case of the software sector in developing economies, as Argentina, it became crucial the extension of the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) in the industry (Moncaut and Robert, 2016). Their presence mitigates the entry barriers into the activity, as well that solve many of the intellectual property problems regarding ?piracy?. Moreover, allows to alleviate balance of payment problems through saves in foreign license buys and through substitution of imports.
At the present, there are no surveys in Argentina specifically designed to account for the importance of FLOSS activities in the local software sector. From a technological survey carried out in 2011 to 257 software firms, the results showed that more than 60% of the respondents use or contribute to the development of open source. Of these firms, almost 97% uses tools, software or open code systems in their productive processes (e.g., Linux, Eclipse, Open Office, etc); and around two out of three contribute by development modules, parts of programs or complete open source programs (Morero and Borrastero, 2015). This gives us a first insight about the FLOSS insertion in Argentina, which underlines the relevance to go deeper into the study of this activity.
FLOSS activity involves an interaction with the Community which could rise the challenge of measuring and quantifying non-monetary transactions (Ghosh, 2003). This introduces the problem of how to measure a productive activity in economic terms with no monetary outcomes or that generates monetary flows in an indirect way. This difficulty holds to the study of innovation.
Innovation surveys are important inputs to the design of development and industrial sectoral policies. Many Latin-American countries have several waves of innovation surveys in manufacturing firms, even some countries (as Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay), include services and software firms. However, any available survey in the software sector at firm level, does not account for the FLOSS particularities.
On the other hand, most of the innovation literature in FLOSS activities are focused in studying the development process at the community or at the project level, mainly through case studies (Hippel and Krogh, 2003, Lee and Cole, 2003, von Hippel and von Krogh, 2009). By the contrary, sectoral statistics usually proceed from surveys design at the firm level. Different countries in Latin America have several surveys waves focused in industrial firms, even including, some of them, the software as a productive sector. Nevertheless, in all the available technology questionnaires at the software firm level, particularities of FLOSS production are not taken into account. As a result, the FLOSS participation in the industry appears invisible. In that sense, it became important to design a particular instrument to perform a survey that could measure the importance of FLOSS in the sector.
There are some antecedents of international surveys to FLOSS firms that should be evaluated to this design, with diverse focus, but none in innovation. The main objective of the study is to generate a contribution to the systematization, assessment and analysis of the international surveys available for the FLOSS activity at the firm level and innovation surveys on the software sector, which could serve as a precedent to the future design of an appropriate measuring instrument.
From their birth, the Free Software movement has transformed the software industry. The Free Software movement arose in the academic sphere (mainly, in the MIT) in the early eighties as a reaction the proprietary software production. Richard Stallman leaded this reaction, creating the GNU General Public License, a way to license software guaranteeing the freedom to use, study, share, copy and modify the software. This license imposes that further products must enjoy the same license, and it is elaborated, supported and defended by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a nonprofit institution that gives a legal framework for the FLOSS development (Stallman, 1983). By the end of 1990?s, Eric Raymond stablished the technological and economical virtues of the open source development model but still allowing a business model based on proprietary software (Raymond, 1999). Since their beginnings, FLOSS has challenged the business models and strategies both for SMEs and for Large Multinational Corporations (Dahlander & Magnusson, 2005).
One of the major issues where economics failed to understand is how firms operate when their developments and innovations are open, and many times free of charge. Moreover, how a firm, as FLOSS companies, can be motivated to collaborate in community projects, as long later their innovations can be used by potential competitors. There are two ways though FLOSS firms can obtain revenues: by the distribution, implementation and sale of FLOSS (both developed by the community, as developed internally), and by selling services grounded on FLOSS (again, both developed by other members of the community or internally by the firm).
In the case of the software sector in developing economies, as Argentina, it became crucial the extension of the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) in the industry (Moncaut and Robert, 2016). Their presence mitigates the entry barriers into the activity, as well that solve many of the intellectual property problems regarding ?piracy?. Moreover, allows to alleviate balance of payment problems through saves in foreign license buys and through substitution of imports.
At the present, there are no surveys in Argentina specifically designed to account for the importance of FLOSS activities in the local software sector. From a technological survey carried out in 2011 to 257 software firms, the results showed that more than 60% of the respondents use or contribute to the development of open source. Of these firms, almost 97% uses tools, software or open code systems in their productive processes (e.g., Linux, Eclipse, Open Office, etc); and around two out of three contribute by development modules, parts of programs or complete open source programs (Morero and Borrastero, 2015). This gives us a first insight about the FLOSS insertion in Argentina, which underlines the relevance to go deeper into the study of this activity.
FLOSS activity involves an interaction with the Community which could rise the challenge of measuring and quantifying non-monetary transactions (Ghosh, 2003). This introduces the problem of how to measure a productive activity in economic terms with no monetary outcomes or that generates monetary flows in an indirect way. This difficulty holds to the study of innovation.
Innovation surveys are important inputs to the design of development and industrial sectoral policies. Many Latin-American countries have several waves of innovation surveys in manufacturing firms, even some countries (as Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay), include services and software firms. However, any available survey in the software sector at firm level, does not account for the FLOSS particularities.
On the other hand, most of the innovation literature in FLOSS activities are focused in studying the development process at the community or at the project level, mainly through case studies (Hippel and Krogh, 2003, Lee and Cole, 2003, von Hippel and von Krogh, 2009). By the contrary, sectoral statistics usually proceed from surveys design at the firm level. Different countries in Latin America have several surveys waves focused in industrial firms, even including, some of them, the software as a productive sector. Nevertheless, in all the available technology questionnaires at the software firm level, particularities of FLOSS production are not taken into account. As a result, the FLOSS participation in the industry appears invisible. In that sense, it became important to design a particular instrument to perform a survey that could measure the importance of FLOSS in the sector.
There are some antecedents of international surveys to FLOSS firms that should be evaluated to this design, with diverse focus, but none in innovation. The main objective of the study is to generate a contribution to the systematization, assessment and analysis of the international surveys available for the FLOSS activity at the firm level and innovation surveys on the software sector, which could serve as a precedent to the future design of an appropriate measuring instrument.
