Abstract—This paper investigates competition between open source and proprietary software. Open source software is divided into two types: free open source and commercial open source. Free open source software can be available from the not-for-profit community, and Commercial open source software is software product based on free open source software. The usability of both free and commercial open source software is assumed to be inferior to proprietary software. It finds that: (i) when commercial open source vendor faces competition from proprietary software and free open source software, it may still be able to obtain profits; (ii) commercial open source vendor’s pricing (resp. share or profit) may still be much lower (resp. less) than that of proprietary vendor even if its software functionality is not inferior to proprietary software; (iii) commercial open source vendor’s pricing and profit may not increase as its software usability increases; (iv) proprietary software’s price decreases with the usability of commercial open source software.

Index Terms—proprietary software, open source software, price competition, software features, software usability

Cite: Mingqing Xing, "Competition between Free Open Source, Commercial Open Source and Proprietary Software," Journal of Communications, vol. 8, no. 10, pp. 665-671, 2013. doi: 10.12720/jcm.8.10.665-671