Private Provision of a Complementary Public Good∗ Richard Schmidtke † University of Munich Preliminary Version Abstract For several years, an increasing number of firms are investing in Open Source Software (OSS). While improvements in such a non- excludable public good are not appropriable, companies can benefit indirectly in a complementary proprietary segment. We study this incentive for investment in OSS. In particular we ask how (1) market entry and (2) public investments in the public good affects the firms’ behaviour and profits. Surprisingly, we find that there exist cases where incumbents benefit from market entry. Moreover, we show the counter-intuitive result that public spending does not necessarily lead to a decreasing voluntary private contribution. JEL-classification numbers: C72, L13, L86 Keywords: Open Source Software, Private Provision of Public Goods, Cournot- Nash Equilibrium, Complements, Market Entry ∗I would like to thank Monika Schnitzer, Karolina Leib, Thomas M¨uller, Sougata Poddar and Patrick Waelbroeck and participants at the EDGE Jamboree in Marseille, at the International Industrial Organiza- tion Conference in Chicago, at the Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues Annual Conference in Torino, at the Kiel-Munich Workshop 2005 in Kloster Seeon at the E.A.R.I.E. in Berlin and at the Annual Meeting of the Verein fuer Socialpolitik in Dresden for helpful comments and suggestions. †Department of Economics, University of Munich, Akademiestr. 1/III, 80799 Munich, Germany, Tel.: +49-89-2180 3232, Fax.: +49-89-2180 2767, e-mail:
[email protected] 1 1 Introduction For several years, an increasing number of firms like IBM and Hewlett-Packard or Suse and Red Hat have begun to invest in Open Source Software.