  We investigate knowledge exchange among commercial organisations, the
rationale behind it and its effects on the market. Knowledge exchange is known
to be beneficial for industry, but in order to explain it, authors have used
high level concepts like network effects, reputation and trust. We attempt to
formalise a plausible and elegant explanation of how and why companies adopt
information exchange and why it benefits the market as a whole when this
happens. This explanation is based on a multi-agent model that simulates a
market of software providers. Even though the model does not include any
high-level concepts, information exchange naturally emerges during simulations
as a successful profitable behaviour. The conclusions reached by this
agent-based analysis are twofold: (1) A straightforward set of assumptions is
enough to give rise to exchange in a software market. (2) Knowledge exchange is
shown to increase the efficiency of the market.
