Alleviating piracy through open source strategy: An exploratory study of business software firms in China

0963-8687/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V doi:10.1016/j.jsis.2009.10.001 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 210 9997008. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (T 1 Tel.: +358 13 2514230; fax: +358 13 2514299. H markets. 2 Her research focuses on international strategic industry. She is the author of two research monograp Property. 3 Tel.: +46 8 163063. His research focuses on creativ global sourcing in China. Tony Fang is the author of th China. This paper advances the existing knowledge of anti-piracy strategies by proposing an open source strategy (OS strategy) to alleviate software piracy based on a qualitative, casebased, exploratory study of eight software firms operating in China. The paper shows that the OS strategy is conditionally adoptable, depending on how users are willing to pay for services (market conditions); how critical and complex software is required for upgrading and modifications (software conditions); and how firms can avoid resources overloading and/or shortage (firm conditions). The paper also identifies several new indicators to assess the effectiveness of the OS strategy against piracy. Managerial implications about how to improve business in piracy-ridden environment are discussed. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.