Terutaka Tansho

Effect on Business Growth by Utilization and Contribution of Open Source Software in Japanese IT Companies

The expanded use of Open Source Software (OSS), and the expansion of the market caused by this adoption has led to a corresponding increase in the number of businesses acting as stakeholders in the field. Some of these are pure users of OSS technology but a great number are developers of such technology, and can be understood to have a substantial investment in this paradigm. It is reasonable to assume that such businesses are rational actors, and that their investment or contribution to the field implies a positive economic benefit either currently obtained or assumed as a return in the future. This paper analyzes how OSS affects Japanese IT companies’ business growth both through simple use and by deeper engagement as a stakeholder in OSS community. This is the first time that such a link between the utilization of OSS and economic growth has been explored in the context of Japan, and it can hopefully lay a foundation for further study regarding the real economic value of this approach to software.

A Study of the Effect on Business Growth by Utilization and Contribution of Open Source Software in Japanese IT Companies

To analyze how OSS effects business growth both through simple use and by deeper engagement as a stakeholder in OSS community, we did questionnaire research to Japanese IT companies in 2012 and 2013. We analyze the progress of utilization and contribution of OSS, and the impact on business growth indicators by them.

Utilization and Development Contribution of Open Source Software in Japanese IT Companies: An Exploratory Study of the Effect on Business Growth

The usage of Open Source Software (OSS) has been more general these days and OSS are utilized in a wide range of business fields not only IT industries. Behind the expansion, there exist OSS development communities, where voluntary engineers dedicate their time and effort for the improvement. Considering development engineers in the companies as input resources, it is important to investigate the output of business growth. In this study, we conducted questionnaire survey to Japanese IT companies in 2013, and then analyzed the present state and relation between OSS utilization and development contribution. Our study revealed that Japanese IT companies are rather free riders of OSS, the volume of development contributions are far less than that of utilization. With regard to the effect on the business growth, the results of correlation analysis implicate that OSS utilization is related to the sales growth in the present term and that development contribution is related to the future growth of the employee number in the company. In order to explore the direct effect on the business growth, we constructed the models of multiple-logistic and logistic analyses, however, no direct and explicit determinants are found from the results of the analyses. Our research endeavors to investigate the OSS effect on the business growth are still on the way, but it is meaningful to provide the present state in numbers and hopefully this will lay some foundation for further study in this field.

A case study of the collaborative approaches to sustain open source business models

Open source licenses provide everyone with the legal right to use, study, share, and improve the technology they cover from the perspective of copyright law. However, there are occasions when open source software packages or projects primarily governed by copyright licenses come into potential conflict with patent issues, or suffer from other governance concerns regarding third-party Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). From an economic perspective it is interesting how instead of undermining adoption, such challenges have led to an increase of collaborative governance solutions in open source, perhaps inspired by how such collaboration in development and business matters has provided benefit to stakeholders. In this paper, we show this evolution of collaborative solutions in open source business by actual example, and in the process illustrate how this unique approach to dealing with diverse ownership across business sectors works in practice.

The Effect of Open Source Licensing on the Evolution of Business Strategy

This paper explores how the approach underlying Open Source development has encouraged a greater sharing of knowledge in related business and legal affairs, and subsequently leads to the emergence of Open Source-driven collaboration by enterprises to address challenges. We use an Economic approach to propose a theoretical framework for Open Source business analysis and provide a defined sample of real-world developments to support its initial findings. We conclude that the need to develop effective Open Source governance solutions has led to widespread collaboration regarding business and legal challenges by stakeholders in the field, and that this collaboration will increase to improve efficiency as the market matures.

Proposal of a Matching System for Companies and Researchers Using Patents and Scientific Papers

For open innovation and industry-university cooperation, it is important for companies and university researchers to find suitable partners to ensure collaborative development. However, it is difficult to find partners via traditional information retrieval systems since they only output a list of patent and scientific paper related to an input query. This paper proposes a system that matches companies with university researchers, and vice versa, by using patents and scientific papers.

Open Source Introducing Policy and Promotion of Regional Industries in Japan

The development style of open source has a possibility to create new business markets for Regional IT industries. Some local governments are trying to promote their regional IT industries by adopting an open source in their electronic government systems. In this paper, we analyze the data of open source application policy of the Japanese government and case studies of promotion policy of local industries by local governments; for example, Nagasaki Prefecture and Matsue City. And it aims to extract the issues in the open sources application policy of local governments and the promotion policy of regional industries in Japan.

Standing Situations and Issues of Open Source Policy in East Asian Nations: Outcomes of Open Source Research Workshop of East Asia

East Asia nations have made some progress with this technology, and started to introduce OSS for e-government systems during the early part of this century. Many countries granted it a central role in their policies. The reasons for this include adoption of software based on standard specification, liberation from vender lock-in, or opposition to the market control of proprietary software. However, the primary reason is to reduce adoption costs for e-government systems. While this policy work is useful, there is a great deal more that needs to be done. The OSS adoption policy in each nation of East Asia must be accompanied by technological progress in domestic IT service industries or US multinationals will expand at the cost of local businesses. If this continues unchecked it will create a new form of lock-in for East Asian nations. Some Asian nations are trying to promote their domestic IT service industries, putting their OSS adoption policy to practical use, and this workshop will provide case studies of that work. It will also provide a forum for discussing current challenges and opportunities around both policy and practical implementation issues across Asia.