Assessing Innovation in the Software Sector: Proprietary vs. FOSS Production Mode. Preliminary Evidence from the Italian Case

Abstract

are the most important dimensions to assess innovation in this field? Can we measure innovative processes carried out by software companies and what kind of innovation do they develop? Are FOSS solutions more innovative than proprietary ones? These are the research questions we endeavor to answer in this paper providing some empirical evidence, obtained using an original methodology of collecting experts' evaluations on the innovation level of 134 IntroductionThe issue of innovation in the software industry is of great interest for both academic and practitioners (Bloch, 2007). Which is an innovative software solution? Which aspects should be considered to highlight the most important elements of innovation processes?In this framework, the success of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) highlights new research issues, dealing with whether and how FOSS programs turn out to be more innovative than proprietary ones (Klincewicz, 2005). The theme is intriguing as FOSS represents a disruptive process innovation affecting industrial dynamics (Dalle et al., 2007), and it can be regarded as an important instantiation of the Open Innovation model (West and Gallagher, 2006

Adoption of open source software in software-intensive organizations – A systematic literature review

“…In a sample of 134 software products, developed by 70 Italian companies, 27 (20%) products were released as OSS [126]. Furthermore, 36 (12%) of the 300 most active projects on SourceForge were founded by companies [28].…”