OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: THE ROLE OF MARKETING IN THE DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION

Abstract

Much of the literature on open source software (OSS) has focused on the role of the community of users and developers as the primary driver of OSS growth. This focus on growth generated by the community is referred to as “single factor” growth and is an assumption shared by literature on the diffusion of innovation. The purpose of this research is to attempt to fit a logistic model to a well-known OSS project as a confirmatory exercise supporting the use of a single factor growth model as suggested by the literature. The results show that a logistic model, or any kind of single factor model, is inadequate to describe the diffusion of the OSS project. The paper then explains conceptually and illustrates mathematically why single factor models cannot fully represent the diffusion of any OSS project. A well-known two-factor model drawn from the marketing literature is presented, shown to solve the problem of single factor models, and used to illustrate the importance of marketing in OSS projects. This research suggests that the OSS literature may be overemphasizing the importance of the size of the user and developer community during the initial stages of growth and that during these stages the diffusion of the OSS project is primarily driven by external forces such as advertising or marketing efforts