The rise of Firefox in the web browser industry: The role of open source in setting standards.
Recent years have witnessed a continuous erosion of the Microsoft Internet Explorer share in the web browser market, mainly induced by the continuous gains of Mozilla Firefox, an open source software product. This tendency would seem to contradict the well-established belief that in a standards batt...
| Publicado en: | Business History Vol. 52; no. 5; pp. 834 - 857 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Aug2010
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=53052815&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 53052815 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00076791 BHI jtl: Business History issn: 00076791 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2010 vid: 52 iid: 5 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 53052815 10.1080/00076791.2010.499431 ppf: 834 ppct: 23 formats: tig: atl: The rise of Firefox in the web browser industry: The role of open source in setting standards. aug: au: Oshri, Ilan de Vries, HenkJ. de Vries, Huibert affil: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Philips HealthCare, Eindhoven, The Netherlands su: Web browsers Internet software Microsoft Corp. Mozilla Corp. Open source software Market share Economic competition Market erosion sug: subj: Web browsers Internet software Microsoft Corp. Mozilla Corp. Open source software Market share Economic competition Market erosion keyword: Firefox Internet Explorer open source software setting standards web browsers ab: Recent years have witnessed a continuous erosion of the Microsoft Internet Explorer share in the web browser market, mainly induced by the continuous gains of Mozilla Firefox, an open source software product. This tendency would seem to contradict the well-established belief that in a standards battle 'the strong grow stronger while the weak grow weaker'. The objective of this study is to explain the evolution of web browsers through the analysis of the competitive relationship between the main players in this ongoing battle. We examine two standards battles: first, Netscape versus Microsoft, followed by the more recent battle between Microsoft and Mozilla. The analysis contributes to the understanding of standard battles in the context of open source software. It will be argued that some characteristics of Open Source Firefox, such as the semi-open development approach and the involvement of commercial companies, partially explain the rise of this web browser. Lock-in mechanisms, which historically have been reported to be dominant factors in standards battles, seem to have little impact in the context of open source software. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2010 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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