Reducing transaction costs in information infrastructures using FLOSS

Authors

  • Marcus Brandão

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v9i11.1191

Abstract

Firms, or more generally, organizations, develop and become larger along time, using more and more computers to work. This growth in the number of computers leads to a growth of software use (operating systems and their applications, for example) and, as a result, to the growth in the number of software use/access licenses to be purchased and managed. For the owners of software intellectual property rights, this process leads to a greater supervision of users to regulate lawful access to software. The situation occurs when all of the software used by an organization is proprietary. This results in some costs — transaction costs — that are not usually taken into account by administrators and managers. What happens if FLOSS is used? We will show that this choice leads to a reduction in transaction costs in terms of computation costs and in terms of the number of managed contracts, which can be numerically reduced by half.

Downloads

Published

2004-11-01

How to Cite

Brandão, M. (2004). Reducing transaction costs in information infrastructures using FLOSS. First Monday, 9(11). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v9i11.1191