An economic perspective on software licenses-open source, maintainers and user-developers

Agents are divided into firms and individuals, which can be either maintainers or user-developers. A maintainer is an agent responsible for releasing new versions of a program and a user-developer is an agent who uses a program but may also become a developer. It is observed through the model that the three licenses induce different incentives and dynamics for maintainers and user-developers and the paper explains, from an economic standpoint, the mechanisms that ensure that programs are developed and maintained under the three license regimes.