Part 4: OpenSource Vs Proprietary Operating System

Previous Link
https://hemchandralive.blogspot.com/2018/08/aos-assignment-1-part-3-opensource-vs.html

CONCLUSION

We developed a model to compare the incentives to invest in the operating system and its applications both under open source and proprietary operating systems.

We found that the comparison of the levels of investment in the operating systems is ambiguous, but the investment in applications is stronger when the operating system is open source.

These results were developed under the assumption that the productivity of investment is the same for a proprietary and an open source system. This is an issue where there is significant disagreement, and both sides (for profit software companies and open source developers) claim that their productivity is higher.

This clearly is an open research issue, but the purposes of this chapter - a change of the assumption of the equal productivity of investment in both environments - will tend to change our result in favor of the ecosystem that is assumed to have higher productivity. For example, if it is assumed that the productivity. of the open source development is larger

the relative investment in the open source operating system increases; if it is assumed that productivity of proprietary software development is higher, the relative investment in the proprietary operating system increases.

An interesting extension of the current model would be the analysis of the innovation incentives in a competitive setting and the dynamics of innovation.

We also developed a short case study of Linux vs. Windows. The discussion distinguished between issues that affect the competition at the client-side, the server-side and the interaction between the client-side and the sever-side.

 Besides the competition between Linux and Windows, there is a need for more research to analyze and understand the strategies of competing Linux distributors. Also more research is needed in understanding the switching costs and the open source adoption strategies of enterprises.

 Another important area is the interaction between client-side and server-side software products and how this interaction affects the competition in the software industry and the success of open source.

Happy Reading :-)