An Investigation into Open Source Software Market Strategy and Business Models

Open source software is developing to be a phenomena that changes the the social, economical and organizational order. Open source is moving beyond the software to other disciplines and industries and becoming social requirement. In addition, there is increasing demand towards open source software not only from end users but also governmental and industry. The current software business models looks into the software industry from the existing social, economical and organizational prospectives. Since open source is changing the business models, there is a need to understand the motive and the drivers either in the users or developers domains. The project identified several business models and critically evaluated them in the context of open source software. In addition, the effect of open source software in the environmental context were discussed. From software business prospective, open source software is redefining several dimensions like the relations between customers and suppliers or the value chain, environmental forces and organizations business models. Open source software model can be regarded as collaborative-value-network which is introduced. Since the current business models can not represent the true picture of the open source software, a modified framework was suggested based on Rajala's software business model.