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Author(s)	Date	Title	Type	Compressed Abstract	Affiliation
Jason V. Morgan	2009-02	Safe harbors and F/OSS community interests: a new approach to United States patent reform advocacy	Paper	Software patents have been a concern in the Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) community for many years. Some F/OSS supporters have been very vocal in their opposition to software patents, yet software patents have a solid foothold in United States patent law. Patent law continues to evolve, but F/OSS interests are not being addressed directly. The focus of some F/OSS advocates on the abolition of software patents has been to extreme a position to move United States policymakers to act. Thus, F/OSS interests are only advanced to the extent that they coincide with the interests of the broader software industry. This is problematic; F/OSS interests do not strictly coincide with the interests of the broader software industry. F/OSS advocates can create a new balance of power by focusing on F/OSS community interests rather than holding out for an end to software patents. Focusing on the interests opens up potential, modest patent reforms. One set of modest reforms are safe habor protections, laws establishing rules that, if followed, exempt parties from key legal consequences. Introducing a series of safe harbors to allow F/OSS contributors to act without fear of taking on unmanageable patent infringement risks could be as effective as eliminating software patents when it comes to protecting F/OSS community interests. With policymakers struggling to adapt the patent system to the competing needs of the pharmaceutical and software industries, F/OSS advocates could obtain safe habors as concessions from policymakers seeking support for other patent reforms. Acting quickly to secure safe harbor protections could neutralize the most significant threats that the patent system could pose for F/OSS.	None
Jan Eilhard and Yann Ménière	2009-02	A Look Inside the Forge: Developer Productivity and Spillovers in Open Source Projects	Paper	This paper presents an empirical study on the production of open source software, based on a panel of 10,553 projects registered on SourceForge over a period of 28 months (February 2005 until May 2007). We use a flexible Translog specification to estimate a production function relating the number of program updates with the number of corporate and voluntary contributors, taking into account the spillovers flowing from other projects. We find that corporate developers are the more productive ones, but that associating them with other developers in a project entails inefficiencies. We also find evidence of non-decreasing returns to scale in open source projects, thus suggesting substantial efficiency gains of division of labor in large open source projects. Our empirical analysis finally highlights a substantial impact of spillovers on productivity. Spillovers mainly benefit mature projects. They especially flow between projects with the same topic and/or programming language, and have a stronger impact in projects involving corporate developers.	CERNA - Mines Paristech
Stefano De Paoli & Vincenzo D'Andrea	2008-04	HOW ARTIFACTS RULE WEB BASED COMMUNITIES: Practices of Free Software Development	Paper	This paper seeks to understand how complex tasks are accomplished by large web based communities. In order to do so we consider that technologies may embody organizational rules, hence becoming the core of coordination efforts in such communities. Our analysis is based on the concepts of translation and inscription taken from the Actor-Network Theory, while the data has been gathered using an ethnographic approach. We base our observation on the case of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS): the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (also known as GRASS) is a system developed by a small group of developers but sustained by very large users' base, located all around the world. In particular we focus on small explanatory examples of everyday development activities of the GRASS community in relation to the internationalization process. We focus on artifacts, such as the Concurrent Versioning System and the GRASS source code, that greatly affect the everyday activities of the community. The main result of our research is the illustration that complex tasks are accomplished by large web based communities thanks to many small contributions which are shaped and organized by the rules embodied in artifacts. This is the pre-print version of the paper: De Paoli S. and D'Andrea V. (2008), How artefacts rule web based communities: practices of Free Software Development, in Int. J. Web Based Communities, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.199–219. which is posted here thanks to the permission of the publisher.	National University of Ireland Maynooth
rahul kala	2008-12	The Open and Closed Styles of Talent Acquisition and Management: Which takes an edge where	Paper	The phenomenal success of Free/Open Source Software during the recent years has led researchers in all related fields to re-think and re-evaluate the studies and concepts, especially those which the open source violates. Talent management and talent acquisition is no exception to this. The sudden rise in open source projects and their success is a cause of motivation for all of us to evaluate their philosophy and implement the same. Proper talent management and acquisition of talent can play a key role in strengthening the industry. Traditional closed management with their classic way of functioning may still look at the open source model as a big mystery. Open source has violated many of the theories of Software Engineering like limited team size, decentralized project management, etc. The concepts of self-motivated individuals, adaptive division of labor, informal or indirect leadership, etc. are the contributions of the open source to the world. In this paper we discuss these concepts and state their differences with the way of working of closed talent management. Even though open source has various benefits in working, but requirement of a good coordination process, redundancy of development, versioning problems, etc. pose a limitation. We present an analogy of the talent management in the two concepts with that of the natural ecosystem. Talent in open source works in a manner similar to the ant colonies. Here the process is more community oriented and there is no single dictator power. The proprietary, on the other hand, works on talent as the lions ruling the den. There is a hierarchy and that needs to be respected. Only the leader has the right to make final decision, and that is binding. We also take a look into the present conditions of meltdown and show how the open source way is better suited for this scenario. Even though the present firms may be seeing a setback at this time of recession, the impact on firms with an open source way of working is much lighter or none at all. We also discuss the interactions between the two styles of talent management and present a model that can be adopted by the proprietary companies to benefit from open model. Our arguments of the paper not only deal with software, but also on content that comes under the domain of Creative Commons. We have taken the examples of Wikipedia, Sourceforge.net, Linux etc. for the various issues we discuss.	SF-FOSS, IIITM Gwalior, http://sf-foss.iiitm.ac.in
Larcik-ol	2015	Good site	Doctoral Thesis	c w welch asquity darlene dances monologue international same day service courier virginia waynesville recreation center	Unknown
L Dahlander and M Magnusson	2008-12	How Do Firms Make Use of Open Source Communities?	Abstract	Relying on four in-depth case studies of firms involved with open source software, we investigate how firms make use of open source communities, and how that use is associated with their business models. Three themes - accessing, aligning and assimilating - are inductively developed for how the firms relate to the external knowledge created in the communities. For each theme, we make an argument about the tactics associated with each theme and their positive and negative consequences. The findings are related to the literature on the open and distributed nature of innovation, and various theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. (PUBLISHED IN LONG RANGE PLANNING - PLEASE EMAIL FOR FULL COPY)	Stanford University and Imperial College London
JAMIL ALKHATIB, MOHAB ANIS, HAMID NOORI	2008-03	OPEN SOURCE: THE NEXT BIG THING IN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER TO DEVELOPING NATIONS	Paper	Free Open Source (FOS) should be one of the least expensive and most effective solutions for technology and knowledge transfer to developing nations. This concept has diffused to several fields such as software, hardware, and content. FOS offers not only a low cost alternative for technology acquisition, but also for networking based on cooperation. In addition, the transaction costs of communication, licensing and negotiations are minimized, freeing up funds for real development. In this paper, FOS incentives, indicators, and measures are explained and the advantages of FOS as a viable technology and knowledge transfer tool for developing countries are highlighted.	Handasa Arabia
Nicolas Jullien	2008-11	Developing 'FLOSS' - A Market Driven Investment: First Evidence from a Francophone Companies Survey	Paper	Over the last few years, FLOSS ("Free Libre Open Source Software") has become a commercially viable reality of the first order. It is viewed as an extrem case of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003), and thus of a laboratory for analysing innovation production in Internet based/knowledge based industries. It the FLOSS field an increasing number of companies are getting involved in the communities of development (Lakhani & Wolf 2005). Scholars (see, for instance Dahlander & Wallin 2006) has analysed this as a way to control a complementary asset, without owning it (as defined by Teece 1986, Teece & al. 1997). In this article, we defend the idea that involvement can be of different intensity, from complementary to specific asset, and that this intensity depends of the market of the firm. To do so, we surveyed francophone companies (France, Belgium, Switzerland) affirming a utilization of FLOSS in their commercial activity. Based on roughly 500 companies concerned, we obtained 141 usable responses and, via an ascendant hierarchical clustering (AHC) we statistically verified a link between FLOSS commercial strategies and degree of involvement into communities. We propose a typology of commercial strategies explaining this differences in involvement.	LUSSI, Telecom Bretagne, M@rsouin
Andreas Meiszner et al.	2008-09	FLOSS-like education transfer report	Paper	Preposition Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities are not only an exemplar for successful software development, but also for well working learning environments. Yet little is known about how learning occurs in the FLOSS communities and what the underlying success factors are. FLOSS communities might be seen as an example of ‘Best Practice’ in how ICT can help to improve education in terms of learning processes, up to date content and open inclusive education where no learner is excluded from participation. The FLOSSCOM project was undertaken in order to evaluate how learning in FLOSS is organised and if, to which degree, and how FLOSS learning principles can be transferred to and used for the improvement of ICT supported formal education. Precisely, the FLOSSPOLS project intended to o identify the factors that contribute to successful knowledge construction in informal learning communities, such as the FLOSS communities o analyze the effectiveness of a FLOSS-like learning community in a formal educational setting o provide case studies, scenarios and guidelines for teachers and decision-makers on how to successfully embed such learning communities within formal educational environments to enhance student progression, retention and achievement o evaluate the project and disseminate the results to the wider community. This report is the third and final report of the FLOSSCOM project. It aims to provide scenarios and guidelines for teachers and decision-makers as practical documentation on how principles of FLOSS-like informal learning communities might be transferred to formal educational environments.	http://www.flosscom.net
Mahmoud Refaat Nasr	2007-09	Open Source Software: The use of open source	Masters Thesis	This thesis explores the reasons behind the poor level of adoption of open source web GIS software, and whether it is due to poor awareness about open source concepts or due to technical deficiencies in the open source tools. The research was done in 2 major phases; the first phase involved conducting surveys to measure the awareness and attitudes towards open source. The surveys examined three categories of people involved in the IT industry, namely: decision makers, software developers, and end users. The measurement of awareness was done by developing an Awareness Indicator and a Sentiment Indicator for each category. These indicators were developed by the author during the course of the study in order to provide a measurable and descriptive indication of the results. The second phase involved performing a comparative analysis between MapServer a leading open source web GIS tool, and three of the leading proprietary web GIS software, namely: ESRI’s ArcIMS, Intergraph’s GeoMedia WebMap, and MapInfo’s MapXtreme. The results of the research provide an insight on how different categories of people view open source, and demonstrate that lack of awareness about open source concepts and its competencies may be a major reason behind the poor adoption of open source solutions. The results of the comparative analysis also demonstrate that MapServer is technically equivalent to its commercial counter parts.	Middlesex university
Andreas Meiszner, Rüdiger Glott and Sulayaman K. Sowe	2008-09	Preparing the Ne(x)t Generation: Lessons learnt from Free/Libre Open Source Software and their Communities	Paper	In this article, the authors Andreas Meiszner, Rüdiger Glott and Sulayaman K. Sowe, examine the lessons that can be learnt from the Free / Libre Open and Source Software (FLOSS) communities. FLOSS communities, as good practice examples of Open Participatory Learning Ecosystems, illustrate possible pathways for higher education to go beyond the limits of the current Open Educational Resource move.	FLOSSCom project / The Open University, UK
Mike Chege	2008-09	Ubuntuism, Commodification, and the Software Dialectic.	Paper	“Free as in speech, but not free as in beer,” is the refrain made famous by Richard Stallman, the standard-bearer of the free software movement. However, many free software advocates seem to be of the opinion that the purity of free software is somehow tainted by any preoccupation with money or profit. Inevitably, this has implications for the economic sustainability of free software, for without a source of income, how can free software hope to survive? The challenge of finding a way to ensure economic sustainability without sacrificing the ideals of free software is what we have termed the “software dialectic.” While the literature on the economics of free software is already quite substantial, in this essay we approach the subject by considering first principles, such as the difference between wealth and money, how the market chooses what to produce, and what the laws of thermodynamics have to do with economics. Finally, even though the ideas expressed in this essay apply to free software in general, here we shall be focusing on that particular incarnation of free software known as the GNU/Linux system.
Greg R. Vetter	2008-12	Slouching toward Open Innovation: Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for Electronic Health Information	Paper	The potential for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to enable open innovation in a particular software market depends on the characteristics of that market. From this premise, using a case study approach, this Article argues that some software markets have characteristics that inherently disfavor initiating or expanding the use of FOSS and its unique mode of licensing the intellectual property that underlies software. The case study involves software to manage health information for hospitals or physician groups in the form of the electronic medical record, or EMR. Proprietary software venders supply most of the products for this software market. Recently, the U.S. government undertook experimental steps to promote a FOSS package for EMR, raising the question as to whether the EMR software market is amenable to FOSS. This Article describes various factors that might signal a FOSS disfavoring market, including low technical aptitude among users, differences among users in their work flow and software interface needs, users with dispassionate computing agendas, and entrenched proprietary competitors in an area supporting minimal complementary goods or services. FOSS, however, might be able to overcome these impedances in a particular software market if its unique motivational mix is strong enough. This Article describes potential facilitators to support this possibility. One such facilitator, specifically for the EMR market, but perhaps generally for other markets, may be safe harbors for FOSS development within any relevant anti-collaboration and anti-tinkering laws. Licensing facilitators include emphasizing approaches such as dual licensing or promoting FOSS contributions by contractors engaged by users. This Article concludes by mentioning potential non-licensing facilitators to augment the FOSS motivational mix for markets that might disfavor it.	University of Houston Law Center
Greg R. Vetter	2008-01	Claiming Copyleft in Open Source Software: What if the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License (GPL) had been Patented?	Paper	Patent law, by necessity, needs some way to evaluate inventiveness. Otherwise, it will grant rights to advances not worth "the embarrassment of an exclusive patent." The innovations of version two of the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) GNU General Public License (GPLv2), arriving in 1991, could not, under U.S. patent law at that time, have been meaningfully measured against patent law's criteria, often referred to as the five elements of patentability. The first element of patentability, statutory subject matter, would have excluded the GPLv2's copyright-based licensing technique as a "business method." A variety of industry developments in the decades following GPLv2's arrival, combined with the license's potent ideological force and clever use of copyright law, propelled FOSS licensing into a prominent and path-breaking place within information technology worldwide. Its force and presence, and lightning-rod character, have grown over time, with GPLv2 remaining the dominant license in mind-share, if not code-share. In addition, all of this occurred without patent protection for GPLv2's unique licensing technique. This then raises the counter-factual inquiry for this symposium article: what might have occurred differently if GPLv2's licensing method had been patentable? In other words, if the U.S. patent law of statutory subject matter in 1991 was sufficiently permissive, and if the FSF and Richard Stallman successfully patented the novel licensing approaches of GPLv2, would patent protection have altered the FOSS movement's two-decade trajectory through information technology and the Internet? If so, can we estimate in what ways? The Article's assessment is that GPLv2 could readily meet the other four elements of patentability (with non-obviousness being the closest call compared to prior sublicensing schemes), and that the FOSS trajectory would change minimally, due to a variety of factors, including practical constraints on the enforcement potency of patent claims to GPLv2, competition from other types of FOSS licensing, and strategic considerations for a variety of players and camps within the FOSS movement. However, in the counterfactual, license proliferation diminishes, and dual licensing may be foreclosed.	University of Houston Law Center
Greg R. Vetter	2007-01	Open Source Licensing & Scattering Opportunism in Software Standards	Paper	Despite their beneficial influence on interoperability and markets, problems of detrimental opportunism occur with technology standards, including standards implemented in software, which this Article calls “Software Standards.” Inspired by new perspectives on the study of semicommons in the history of real property, this Article contemplates the substitutability of free and open source software (“FOSS”) for traditional standard-setting approaches. Standards are analogous to semicommons, where public and private use interact, raising the possibility of opportunistic influence on the Software Standard to increase private gain at the expense of the public benefit in a more uniform standard. With its source code disclosure requirement, FOSS shifts and dampens this opportunism, although various limits influence the reach of its effect. The political economy around a standard will express itself differently under a FOSS implementation, and clearing intellectual property rights in the standard is no more certain than under the traditional standard-setting approach.	University of Houston Law Center
Greg R. Vetter	2006-01	Exit & Voice in Free & Open Source Software Licensing: Moderating the Rein over Software Users	Paper	This article analyzes the interplay between exit and voice for user adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), as these two are conceptualized in Albert O. Hirschman’s book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States. Exit and voice cooperatively sustain FOSS through the institutional mechanism of the FOSS license. Four situations demonstrate this. First, even with attendant uncertainties in its novel legal landscape, users adopt FOSS to escape proprietary licensed software. This exit is tinged with indirect voice. Second, this indirect voice arises from collaborative projects to develop FOSS. The very same code and license that provides the exit carries the voice. Third, complementing exit by users are technologists who contribute, extracurricularly, to open source projects, signaling their affiliation with FOSS. Fourth, from its beginning, the FOSS movement has expressed its voice. Its norm entrepreneurs use rhetoric and persuasion to reinforce FOSS’s disciplining effect on an entire industry. These four situations highlight exit and voice combinations for copyright based open source licensing and patent law. The FOSS copyright based licensing scheme helps channel FOSS into uses where exit and voice are concentrated and synergistically reinforce. The interplay with patent law generates voice because patent law, at least theoretically, inhibits exit to FOSS and thus pressurizes the voice mechanism in Hirschman’s framework. Understanding FOSS based combinations of exit and voice in light of this framework helps participants and policy makers formulate legal, licensing and policy strategies to guide the movement and respond to its evolution.	University of Houston Law Center
Shiyevina Amelia Abdool	2005-06	THE THEORY OF FOSS AND ITS ACCEPTANCE IN DEVELOPING NATIONS	Paper	Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is on the march across the globe, and it offers a reliable alternative to proprietary, commercial products and addresses the full range of users’ needs. For example FOSS Apache provides the majority of web pages due to its huge installed user base, with the last figures showing Apache occupying 67% of all web sites world wide. Since FOSS is world class, (i.e. it is free to share/distribute amongst individuals, clients, offices, etc.) and can be modified according to an individual’s/organization’s motives, it may be viewed as a competitor to proprietary and commercial products. For instance, when compared to the existing standard, user-friendly programs that run on Microsoft Windows and Apple operating systems, FOSS offers alternate operating systems that can be used on all computer systems and a range of Internet server software with advanced functionality.	University of Goteborg
Pia Waugh, Randy Metcalfe	2008-07	The Foundations of Openness	Paper	This project explores the notion of openness in software projects. It contextualizes different facets of openness and considers their individual and collective usefulness. It provides a tentative evaluative schema to allow others to weigh up specific criteria that may be important to them. It acknowledges that these criteria may have different weightings for different people, e.g. governance vs open standards vs code licence. The object is *not* a blanket recommendation for openness in all facets of a project. Rather it is a tool for projects, and those who use those projects, to investigate and illuminate the choices being made as well as the implication of open and closed approaches.	OSS-Watch (Oxford University, UK) and Waugh Partne
Jai Asundi, Octavian Carare, Kutsal Dogan	2008-08	Competitive Implications of Software Open-Sourcing	Paper	This paper is concerned with the economic trade-offs associated with open-sourcing, the business strategy of releasing free open-source versions of commercial software products. The effect of the release of open-source versions on the customers' perception of products is an important determinant of open-sourcing outcomes. We model open-sourcing as a strategic option for firms that compete in the market for software products. Of particular importance in our model is the effect of open-sourcing on customer values and the possibility for better customization offered by the open-source products. We show that open-sourcing can arise as an equilibrium outcome in our simple two-stage game. If the enhancement of customer values from open-sourcing is moderate or high, firms may find it optimal to release open-source versions of their products. Paper is available via SSRN at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1185374	University of Texas at Dallas
Sebastian von Engelhardt	2008-06	Intellectual Property Rights and Ex-Post Transaction Costs: the Case of Open and Closed Source Software	Paper	The economic characteristics of software and transaction costs explain, why closed source and open source software co-exist. It is about the efficient use of a non- and anti-scarce resource. But because of ex-post transaction costs that lead to information asymmetries, some property rights regarding the resource "source code" are not exclusively separable. Thus, the first best allocation of property rights, that would yield an optimal usage of a source code, is not realizable. Or, that is to say, a first best realization of contracts is not feasible. Hence, open and closed source software are two second best arrangements, both with specific assets and drawbacks. The principle of closed source benefits from direct (monetary) incentives and control, but has limits in its scope (size) because of transaction costs. Open source, on the one hand, benefits from its openness that creates spillovers and enables to incorporate human capital that is not acquirable for closed source firms. On the other hand, there are costs of openness, such as coordination costs (consensus finding, etc.) the danger of free riding or under provision, or forking.	Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
Nicolas Jullien	2008-06	Developing “FLOSS”, a market driven investment. First evidence from a francophone companies survey.	Paper	Over the last few years, FLOSS (“Free Libre Open Source Software”) has become a commercially viable reality of the first order, with an increasing number of companies getting involved in the communities developing it (Lakhani & Wolf 2005). In this article, we try to explicit the link between market offer and involvement into communities. To do so, we surveyed francophone companies (France, Belgium, Switzerland) affirming a utilization of FLOSS in their commercial activity. Based on roughly 500 companies concerned, we obtained 141 usable responses and we statistically verified the link between FLOSS commercial strategies and degree of involvement into communities. We propose a typology of commercial strategies explaining the differences in involvement and we validate this typology thanks to a ascendant hierarchical classification (AHC) on them.	M@rsouin-TELECOM Bretagne.
Jan Fredrik Stoveland	2008-05	Managing Firm-Sponsored Open Source Communities	Masters Thesis	The interest and use of open source software and methodology has gained an increasing amount of commercial attention, and we are currently witnessing that established proprietary software firms are taking a step further by opening their own software projects in an attempt to create firm-sponsored open source communities. Siobhan O’Mahony’s research finds that these firms have to handle a tension between openness and control in their product development, but little research has been done to detail how this balance is achieved. I have studied the American software company Novell and the openSUSE project, largely guided by an inductive, qualitative approach supplemented by some quantitative methods. In the study I draw upon Niklas Luhmann's theory of autopoietic social systems to create a distinction between the sponsor firm and the sponsored community, and I investigate the mechanisms that hold the two systems together despite their differences in interests. I argue that there are several elements that ensure a tight coupling between the two systems, including the boundary objects situated between them, the shared communication channels and the efforts of the marginal people whom have roles in both systems. A primary contribution to the theory of boundary objects is a distinction between what I describe as supportive-objects and target-objects. I argue that the latter holds a strong motivating power that should be appended to our understanding of individuals’ and collectives’ motivation to participate in open source software projects. I explore several possible future scenarios for the evolution of firm-sponsored communities, and find that Novell is pursuing a strategy for managing openness in such a community.	University of Oslo
PJ Wall & Seamas Kelly	2006-09	Bringing Open Source Software to the Desktop : An In-Depth Study of the Implementation and use of Star Office	Paper	Open Source software is coming to the attention of individuals, organisations, and governments worldwide, and is increasingly being adopted by firms for specific business purposes. However, the uptake of end-user desktop OSS applications to date has been modest, and Microsoft products remain the de-facto standard on the corporate desktop. This brings into sharp focus one of the most challenging questions faced by the Open Source community today ... namely, if organisations value low acquisition costs, low total cost of ownership of software, potentially plentiful support, free access to source code, and the wish to avoid proprietary software vendor lock-in, why have more organisations not adopted OSS? This paper contributes to the existing research by reporting on an in-depth, interpretive, processual study of an attempt by a large Irish Trade Union to replace Microsoft Office with an Open Source alternative, StarOffice.	University College Dublin, Ireland
Jeremy Malcolm	2007-09	Open Source Software Development as a Model for Internet Governance	Paper	Internet governance and open source software development alike are most effectively achieved through a balance of decentralisation and control. For Internet governance, this is found in governance by network, in which governmental and private stakeholders, and the hierarchical and decentralised mechanisms of governance they respectively favour, are brought together. However if the stakeholders' power is unequal, so will be the balance of the network. The case of open source software development provides the key to ensuring that stakeholders are not oppressed in a network unbalanced by hierarchical power. This relies on the phenomenon of exit-based empowerment that flows from the open source software licence. However, it can be extended to the design of governance networks given certain idealising assumptions, and even when these do not hold, useful lessons for the future reform of Internet governance arrangements remain.	Murdoch University
Amit Deshpande, Dirk Riehle	2008-09	The Total Growth of Open Source	Paper	Software development is undergoing a major change away from a fully closed software process towards a process that incorporates open source software in products and services. Just how significant is that change? To answer this question we need to look at the overall growth of open source as well as its growth rate. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze the growth of more than 5000 active and popular open source software projects. We show that the total amount of source code as well as the total number of open source projects is growing at an exponential rate. Previous research showed linear and quadratic growth in lines of source code of individual open source projects. Our work shows that open source is expanding into new domains and applications at an exponential rate.	SAP Labs LLC
Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle	2008-09	Continuous Integration in Open Source Software Development	Paper	Commercial software firms are increasingly using and contributing to open source software. Thus, they need to understand and work with open source software development processes. This paper investigates whether the practice of continuous integration of agile software development methods has had an impact on open source software projects. Using fine-granular data from more than 5000 active open source software projects we analyze the size of code contributions over a project’s life-span. Code contribution size has stayed flat. We interpret this to mean that open source software development has not changed its code integration practices. In particular, within the limits of this study, we claim that the practice of continuous integration has not yet significantly influenced the behavior of open source software developers.	SAP Labs LLC
Prof. Martin J. Weller, Andreas Meiszner, Sulayman K. Sowe, Athanasis Karoulis	2008-02	Report on the effectiveness of a FLOSS-like learning community in formal educational settings	Paper	This report examines some of the pedagogic principles embodied in Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities and briefly looks at case studies of FLOSS-like approaches in education. It analyzes and evaluates the differences between Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as informal learning environments and on the other side formal educational settings The report also point out ways on transferring those FLOSS principles to formal educational settings and looks at existing examples of eLearning delivery and examines why these do not provide the types of constructivist learning environments as observed in FLOSS communities. This report is the second one in a series of three reports that are compiled as part of the FLOSSCom project (www.flosscom.net). The first report looked at the learning environment of FLOSS communities and the third report, to be published in summer 2008, is aimed at providing case studies, scenarios and guidelines for teachers and decision-makers on how learning communities similar to the FLOSS communities can be embedded within formal educational environments.	The Open University, UK / Aristotle University of
Anita Say Chan	2008-02	PhD Candidate	Paper	National legislation to mandate the use or consideration of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in government institutions is increasingly emerging as a strategy for FLOSS advocates in Latin America and the broader developing world. Such movements for the political use and regulation of FLOSS mark a distinct turn in the objectives and work of FLOSS advocates, whose activities largely focused on the dissemination of FLOSS as a technological artifact. This paper investigates the network of diverse actors involved in promoting FLOSS legislation in Peru, one of the fi rst nations where a movement for FLOSS legislation emerged. It emphasizes that crucial to the work of FLOSS’ network actors is not their merely technological productivity, but their cultural and political productivity – that is, their ability to produce diverse body of meaning made both evident and mobile in narratives of FLOSS use and adoption. This paper is published in Science Studies, number 2 2007, see http://www.sciencestudies.fi, and made available here with kind permission.	MIT, Program in Science, Technology, & Soicety
Stephanie Freeman	2008-02	The Material and Social Dynamics of Motivation: Contributions to Open Source Language Technology Development	Paper	Volunteer motivation has been a central theme in Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) literature. This research has been largely dominated by economists who rely in their surveys on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the ‘hacker ethic’ – for profit juxtaposition. The paper argues that survey-based analytical frameworks and research designs have led to a focus on some motivational attributions at the expense of others. It then presents a case study that explores dynamic, non individualistic and content-sensitive aspects of motivations. The approach is based on socio-cultural psychology and the author’s observations of a hybrid firm-community FLOSS project, OpenOffice.org. Instead of separating intrinsic motivations from extrinsic ones, it is argued that complex and changing patterns of motivations are tied to changing objects and personal histories prior to and during participation. The boundary between work and hobby in an individual’s participation path is blurred and shifting. This paper is published in Science Studies, number 2 2007, see http://www.sciencestudies.fi, and made available here with kind permission.	University of Helsinki, Center for Activity Theory
Didier Demazière, François Horn and Marc Zune	2007-12	The functioning of a free software community: entanglement of three regulation modes -control, autonomous, and distributed.	Paper	This paper consider FLOSS communities as "going concerns" which necessitate a minimum of order and common, shared, social rules to function. Through an in-depth and diachronic analysis of the Spip project, we present two classical modes of social regulation: a control regulation centred on the product and an autonomous regulation reflecting the differentiated commitments. Our data shows that the meaning, value and legitimacy of contributors’ involvements are defined and rated more collectively, through exchanges, judgments, and evaluations. A third regulation mode, called distributed community regulation and aimed at creating and transforming shared rules that produces recognition and stratification, is then presented. This paper is published in Science Studies, number 2 2007, see http://www.sciencestudies.fi, and made available here with kind permission.	CNRS-U. of Versailles (France), CNRS-U. of Lille3
Mary Darking and Edgar A Whitley	2007-12	Towards an understsanding of FLOSS: Infrastructures, Materiality and the Digital Business Ecosystem	Paper	This paper is published in Science Studies, number 2 2007, see www.sciencestudies.fi, and made available here with kind permission In this paper we present empirical work detailing the engagement practices of a large FLOSS project, the Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE). In common with many other FLOSS projects, the DBE project focused on the development of infrastructural software components. Infrastructures and FLOSS software exhibit multiplicity: as objects they both change and stay the same. Whilst the implications of multiplicity with respect to infrastructure have been well-documented, with respect to FLOSS, they remain under-explored. Through examining how the DBE engaged new participants we were able to explore the nature of the FLOSS software object by asking the implied question: engagement with what? We draw on recent analysis by Law and Singleton to show how the innovative yet non-existent potentiality of the DBE was as significant to engagement as its steadily growing codebase. We argue that acknowledging the materiality and immateriality of the FLOSS software object has important consequences for management of, and engagement with, FLOSS projects. Keywords: FLOSS, infrastructures, innovation, materiality, engagement	University of Brighton, London School of Economics
Gilberto Munoz, Carolyn Seaman, and Akif G Koru	2008-10	An Empirical Investigation into the Adoption of Open Source Software in Hospitals	Abstract	Open source software (OSS) has gained considerable attention recently in health care. Yet, how and why OSS is being adopted within hospitals in particular remains a poorly understood issue. This research attempts to further this understanding. A mixed-method research approach was used to explore the extent of OSS adoption in hospitals as well as the factors facilitating and inhibiting adoption. The findings suggest a very limited adoption of OSS in hospitals. Hospitals tend to adopt general-purpose instead of domain-specific OSS. We found that software vendors are the critical factor facilitating the adoption of OSS in hospitals. Conversely, lack of in-house development, as well as a perceived lack of security, quality, and accountability of OSS products were factors inhibiting adoption. An empirical model is presented to illustrate the factors facilitating and inhibiting the adoption of OSS in hospitals. Document Actions
Gilberto Munoz, Carolyn Seaman, and Akif G Koru	2008-10	An Empirical Investigation into the Adoption of Open Source Software in Hospitals	Abstract	Open source software (OSS) has gained considerable attention recently in health care. Yet, how and why OSS is being adopted within hospitals in particular remains a poorly understood issue. This research attempts to further this understanding. A mixed-method research approach was used to explore the extent of OSS adoption in hospitals as well as the factors facilitating and inhibiting adoption. The findings suggest a very limited adoption of OSS in hospitals. Hospitals tend to adopt general-purpose instead of domain-specific OSS. We found that software vendors are the critical factor facilitating the adoption of OSS in hospitals. Conversely, lack of in-house development, as well as a perceived lack of security, quality, and accountability of OSS products were factors inhibiting adoption. An empirical model is presented to illustrate the factors facilitating and inhibiting the adoption of OSS in hospitals. Document Actions
Yuwei Lin and Lars Risan	2008-01	Guest Editorial of the Special Issue on Socio-technical Dynamics in the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Social World	Paper	This special issue is the first volume in academia dedicated to a qualitative inquiry on dynamics in the FLOSS development and implementation, even if it is not alone in this endeavour (see e.g., Coleman, 2004; Kelty, 2005). Such a qualitative inquiry challenges the universally vocal and normative way of depicting FLOSS culture and practices (e.g., a homogeneous gift-giving and volunteering culture). The special issue encourages a practice-based and holistic view to exploring multiple cultures and practices in developing, localising, appropriating, and customising FLOSS. It also addresses the diversity in FLOSS communities through asking how seemingly global FLOSS cultures are translated into different con- texts and locales. The importance of such an emphasis on how FLOSS technologies and practices diffract as they travel is nicely encapsulated by Haraway (1992) in her optic metaphor of white light that diffractes through a prism and becomes a rainbow. In light of this metaphor, a piece of FLOSS software is never really the same; when reproduced and shared, it is both the same (the standard) and something else in the mean time.	University of Manchester (UK) and University of Os
Joachim Henkel	2008-01	Champions of Revealing – The Role of Open Source Developers in Commercial Firms	Paper	The link between firms engaging in open source software (OSS) development and the OSS community is established by individual developers. This linkage might entail a principal-agent issue due to the developer’s double allegiance to firm and OSS community, and expose the firm to the risk of losing intellectual property. Using both interviews and a large-scale survey, I substantiate the importance of the developer’s role. However, neither interview data nor regression analysis show indications of commercially harmful revealing behavior induced by "Free Software ideology." Management, on the other hand, sometimes seems to be overly concerned about openness. I conclude that a more positive stance towards openness will allow firms to better share in the benefits of open innovation processes.	Technical University of Munich
Dirk Riehle	2007-04	The Economic Motivation of Open Source: Stakeholder Perspectives	Paper	Open source software has changed the rules of the game, impacting significantly the economic behavior of stakeholders in the software ecosystem. In this new environment, developers strive to be committers, vendors feel pressure to produce open source products, and system integrators anticipate boosting profits.	SAP Labs LLC
Saskia van de Nieuwenhof	2008-01	Licensing Freedom; An Ethical Analysis of Free and Open Source Software Licenses	Masters Thesis	Free and open source software enables users to use, read and modify the source code of computer programs. In proprietary software, access to the source code is not given and users are generally not permitted to use, read and modify the source code. Opponents of a proprietary system state that proprietary software is morally wrong and in this thesis, the arguments they use are evaluated. Several licensing schemes can be used as an addition to copyright law to give users the rights described above. The most important division between these different licenses can be made on the basis of the use of the copyleft principle. This principle obliges the licensee to distribute modified versions of the software under the same, or similar terms as the original license. In this thesis, this obligation is seen as a restriction on the freedom of the individual. Comparisons and possible justifications will give better insight in this supposed contradiction.	Utrecht University
Yu-Wei Lin and Enrico Zini	2007-09	Free/libre open source software implementation in schools: Evidence from the field and implications for the future	Paper	This empirical paper shows how free/libre open source software (FLOSS) contributes to mutual and collaborative learning in an educational environment. Unlike proprietary software, FLOSS allows extensive customisation of software to support the needs of local users better. This also allows users to participate more proactively in the development and implementation process of a FLOSS-based system. In this paper, we observes how implementing FLOSS in an Italian high school challenges the conventional relationship between end users themselves (e.g. teachers and students) and that between users and developers. The findings will shed some light on the social aspects of FLOSS-based computerization – including the role of FLOSS in social and organizational change in educational environments and the ways that the social organi- zation of FLOSS are influenced by social forces and social practices.	ESRC National Centre for E-Social Science, Univers
Sulayman K. Sowe, L. Angelis, I. Stamelos, Y. Manolopoulos	2007-09	Using Repository of Repositories (RoRs) to Study the Growth of F/OSS Projects: A Meta-Analysis Research Approach.	Paper	Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) repositories contain valuable data and their usefulness in studying software development and community activities continues to attract a lot of research attention. A trend in F/OSS studies is the use of metadata stored in a repository of repositories or RoRs. This paper utilizes data obtained from such RoRs -FLOSSmole- to study the types of projects being developed by the F/OSS community. We downloaded projects by topics data in five areas (Database, Internet, Software Development, Communications, and Games/Entertainment) from Flossmole's raw and summary data of the sourceforge repository. Time series analysis show the numbers of projects in the five topics are growing linearly. Further analysis supports our hypothesis that F/OSS development is moving ''up the stack'' from developer tools and infrastructure support to end-user applications such as Databases. The findings have implications for the interpretation of the F/OSS landscape, the utilization and adoption of open source databases, and problems researchers might face in obtaining and using data from RoRs.	Department of Informatics. Aristotle University, T
Christoph Lattemann, Stefan Stieglitz	2005-01	Framework for Governance in Open Source Projects	Paper	In recent years, the development of software in open source communities has attracted immense attention from research and practice. The idea of commercial quality, free software, and open source code accelerated the development of well-designed open source software such as Linux, Apache tools, or Perl. Intrinsic motivation, group identification processes, learning, and career concerns are the key drivers for a successful cooperation among the participants. These factors and most mechanisms of control, coordination, and monitoring forms of open source communities can hardly be explained by traditional organizational theories. In particular, the micro and macro structures of open source communities and their mode of operation are hardly compatible with the central assumption of the New Institutional Theory, like opportunistic behavior. The aim of this contribution is to identify factors that sustain the motivation of the community members over the entire life cycle of an open source project. Adequate coordination and controlling mechanisms for the governance in open source communities may be extracted.	University of Potsdam
Evangelia Berdou	2007-11	Managing the Bazaar: Commercialization and peripheral participation in mature, community-led Free/Open source software projects	Doctoral Thesis	The thesis investigates two fundamental dynamics of participation and collaboration in mature, community-led Free/Open Source (F/OS) software projects - commercialization and peripheral participation. The two primary case studies of the research are the GNOME and KDE communities.The thesis contributes insights into how the gift economy is embedded in the exchange economy and the role of peripheral contributors. The analysis indicates that community-integrated paid developers have a key role in project development, maintaining the infrastructure aspects of the code base. The analysis suggests that programming and non-programming contributors are distinct in their make-up, priorities and rhythms of participation, and that learning plays an important role in controlling access. The results show that volunteers are important drivers of peripheral activities, such as translation and documentation. The term ‘autonomous peripherality’ is used to capture the unique characteristics of these activities. These findings support the argument that centrality and peripherality are associated with the division of labour, which, in turn, is associated with employment relations and frameworks of institutional support.The thesis shows how the tensions produced by commercialization and peripheral participation are interwoven with values of meritocracy, ritual and strategic enactment of the idea of community as well as with tools and techniques developed to address the emergence of a set of problems specific to management and governance. These are characterized as ‘technologies of communities’.	London School of Economics and Political Science;
Andreas Lloyd	2007-06	"A system that works for me" - an anthropological analysis o computer hackers' shared use and development of the Ubuntu system	Masters Thesis	Based on 6 months of anthropological fieldwork both on-line and in-person among the developers working to develop and maintain the Ubuntu Linux system, this thesis examines the individual and collaborative day-to-day practices of these developers as they relate to the computer operating system that is the result of their labour. Despite being spread across the industrialized world, these "hackers" socialise, share their knowledge, and come to depend on each other in their work across the Internet, as well as in their in-person meetings at conferences and summits. I argue that these shared and negotiated on-line and in-person practices constitute a community of practice (Wenger 1998) rooted in a more than 40-year old “oral” computing tradition based on the Unix operating system. Taking the Ubuntu system as my point of departure, I examine the network of practices, processes and actors in which it has been constructed, and through a strategically selected constellation of theories drawn from anthropology, philosophy, and new media studies, I seek to describe and analyze the three central dimensions of a community of practice. I conclude by suggesting that it is the possibility to adopt, learn, configure, and even build the system according to their own needs, which opens the meritocratic community of practice for new contributors to scale the steep curve of learning necessary to enter and learn among them. In this way, the Ubuntu hackers come to share more than just the same system, they come to share a common history, and, to a certain extent, a shared identity through their practice.	University of Copenhagen
Dario Lorenzi, Cristina Rossi	2007-12	Innovativeness of software solutions: evidence from an alternative methodology. Comparing Free/Open Source and proprietary products Comparing Free/Open Source and proprietary products.	Paper	The issue of innovation processes taking place in the software sector is currently widely debated. Challenging questions arise about what products/services have to be considered innovative, and whether a specific artefact is innovative or not. In this framework, the widespread success of the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) put forward new research issues, dealing with whether and how programs developed according to the new production paradigm turn out to be more innovative than traditional ones. In this framework, this paper aims at contributing to the literature by addressing three main research questions: (i) are software solutions produced by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) innovative? (ii) What kinds of innovations are implemented? And, finally, (iii) are programs based on FOSS more innovative than proprietary ones? Basing on a sample of 134 software solutions produced by Italian SMEs and using an original methodology to asses the problem of evaluating innovation in the software field, we provides some first insights of what emerges if we set aside the traditional innovation indicators and endower to build alternative metrics, specifically developed to target the complexity of the innovation processes in the software markets.	DIG, Politecnico di Milano
Sulayman K. Sowe and Ioannis Stamelos	2008-06	Involving Software Engineering Students in Open Source Software Projects: Experiences from a Pilot Study	Paper	Anecdotal and research evidences show that the Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) development model has produced a paradigm shift in the way we develop, support, and distribute software. This shift is not only redefining the software industry but also the way we teach and learn in our software engineering (SE) courses. But for many universities F/OSS is seen as an optional low cost technology to support the IT infrastructure and administrational duties. Few see F/OSS as an opportunity for students to learn the SE concepts and skills we teach. Furthermore, it is still an open question as to whether the F/OSS methodology can be effectively used to teach SE courses within the formally structured curriculum in most universities. This paper discusses F/OSS projects as bazaars of learning that offer a meaningful learning context. The discussion is centered on a pilot study in which students were involved in software testing in F/OSS projects. We present the teaching and learning framework we used in the pilot study and report on our experiences, lessons learned, and some practical problems we encountered. Our grading and evaluation approach show that the students did relatively well as bug hunters and reporters. Results from two online surveys indicate that students are motivated in participating in software testing in the bazaar, and they are willing to participate in project activities long after their graduation. The study reveals one possible way SE educators can teach and integrate F/OSS into their formal curricular structure.	Aristotle University, Department of Informatics
Linus Dahlander	2007-10	Penguin in a new suit: A tale of how de novo entrants emerged to harness free and open source communities	Abstract	A growing body of literature has explored the motivations for individuals to take part in free and open source software (FOSS), yet how firms participate is largely an unattended research area. Building on information from an extensive dataset of secondary sources and 30 in-depth interviews, I show that de novo entrants have emerged in conjunction with a changing institutional infrastructure and a more pragmatic attitude toward firms that focus on technological benefits rather than ideology. To understand how these firms try to harness the work of these communities, I use the empirical data to derive a 2*2 matrix of different approaches. The X axis reflects whether or not the firms initiated a new community or relied on communities founded by peers, whereas the Y axis represents the degree of participation of the firm in the community. This taxonomy illustrates how de novo entrant are initiating new forms of communities or joining communities established by peers. This suggests that while many of the central pillars of FOSS remains, de novo entrants have emerged to find new ways of making business resulting in various implications for firm strategies and knowledge disclosure. PLEASE EMAIL IF YOU LIKE A COPY OF THE PAPER!	Imperial College London
Linus Dahlander & Martin W. Wallin	2006-10	A man on the inside: Unlocking communities as complementary assets	Paper	Since Teece’s seminal paper explaining who were the gainers from technological innovation, increased globalization and the information and communication technology revolution have brought newways for firms to organize and appropriate from innovation. A new more open model of innovation suggests that firms can benefit from sources of innovation that stem from outside the firm. The central theme of this paper is how firms try to unlock communities as complementary assets. These communities exist outside firm boundaries beyond ownership or hierarchical control. Because of practices developed by communities to protect their work, firms need to assign individuals to work in these communities in order to gain access to developments and, to an extent, influence the direction of the community. Using network analysis we show that some software firms sponsor individuals to act strategically within a free and open source software (FOSS) community. Firm sponsored individuals interact with more individuals than interact with them, and also they seek to interact with central individuals in the community. However, we can see differences in how individuals interact, depending on whether their affiliation is with a dedicated FOSS firm or an incumbent in the software industry. Apparently, some firm managers believe they need ‘a man on the inside’ to be able to gain access to communities. PLEASE EMAIL IF YOU LIKE A COPY OF THE PAPER!	Imperial College London & ETH
Rüdige Glott; Andreas Meiszner; Sulayman K. Sowe	2007-07	Analysis of the Informal Learning Environment of FLOSS (Free / Libre Open Source Software) Communities	Paper	The general concept behind Free/Libre/Open Source Software (henceforth FLOSS) is making the source code of software accessible to anyone who wants to obtain it. Binaries or executables are available via the Internet and can be 'freely' downloaded and used. Prolific licensing agreements such as the General Public License (GPL) define the rights users have over the product. In the literature, many terms are in use to describe the FLOSS phenomenon. Notably, Free Software (FS), a term used by Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Software (OSS) used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). In addition, Free Open Source Software (FOSS), Libre Software (LS), and Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) are terms frequently used by researchers. In this report the term FLOSS is used to refer to users’ freedom to use, modify, distribute, or even sell the software with little obligations as in propriety or closed source software. When a user modifies the software, he/she can either choose to keep changes made private or altruistically return them to the FLOSS community so that everyone can benefit from his derived work. FLOSS development did not begin with the inception of the Linux operating system, in 1991. Rather, the concept existed since the formation of SHARE – a working group set up to coordinate the programming work of the IBM 701, in 1952 (Sowe, 2007b). In the academic environment, software development and distribution among researchers and departments is not new, and goes back to the earliest days of software in university environments when software was developed to solve practical problems and could be freely shared. However, what is now true is that FLOSS has fundamentally changed the way we develop and distribute software. Enable by the Internet, geographically distributed individuals voluntarily contribute to a project by means of the Bazaar model (Raymond, 1999). Extensive peer collaboration allows project participants to write code, debug, test, and integrate software. Communities in various projects provide support services such as suggestions for products features, act as distributing organs, answer queries, help new members having problems with the software. FLOSS development not only exemplifies a viable software development approach, but also a model for the creation of self-learning and self-organizing communities (Sowe, et al. 2006c). FLOSS is also a virtual learning context in which both professional software developers and novice users benefit by leveraging their knowledge and information access repertoire. The context enable them to participate at their own convenience and learn (coding or other software related task) at their own pace (Sowe, et al. 2005; page 297). Furthermore, learners can conclude on the learning scope themselves (what to do) and decide on the method of acquiring the knowledge (how to do it). Knowledge acquisition is accomplished, for example, by having access to a large code-base, studying online documentation, asking more experienced members for assistance. In essence knowledge is acquired in FLOSS through learning by doing, which represents the drill-and-practice approach in normal constructivist environments. However, the FLOSS virtual learning context is not without its downside. Apart from physical isolation and detachment from face-to-face interaction commonly associated with virtual learning environments, learning in FLOSS requires access to Internet and moderate computer facilities. In addition, a high degree of computer literacy, reading, writing, and typing is required to participate effectively. The environment is also not conflict free. Flaming, the feeling of being ignored in a dominant discussion, disinterestedness, long delays in receiving responses from communities, the expenditure of searching through discussion archives to see issues previously raised in the communities, access rights to participate in some community activities are all major concerns in the management of the FLOSS learning context (Sowe, et al. 2005). In recent times, FLOSS is making inroads not only in business and software industries but in colleges and universities as well. There is increased interest in the FLOSS learning environment (Sowe, et al., 2004; Bacon and Dillion, 2006) and in FLOSS projects as bazaars of learning (Sowe, et al., 2006). As Faber (2002) noted, FLOSS is both an alternative teaching methodology and an educational model. The main objective of FLOSSCom is using the principles of informal learning environments of FLOSS communities to improve Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supported formal education. Despite the influence and popularity of FLOSS and the benefit inherent in its methodology, educational institutions have been slow to adapt. This can partly due to the fact that the FLOSS environment is fundamentally different from the formal learning environment in most institutions. The focus of this report is collate and report on the learning activities of individuals in various FLOSS communities. The report benefits from the experiences and expositions of various authors in order to provide a synergy and a fresh look into the learning environment of FLOSS communities. FLOSS communities, like other online communities (e.g. Community of Practice (CoPs)) have many interrelated elements that define the dynamics of the community. As such, this report is divided into 5 major sections, each focusing on a specific aspect of the learning environment of FLOSS communities with a 6th section summarizing the main findings. Section 1: The first part of the report is an introduction to FLOSS. The historical account of FLOSS is presented together with the many meanings of the term. This is followed by the demographic distribution of FLOSS participants and an explanation of what FLOSS communities are. Section 2: The next chapter examines the role of learning and knowledge exchange within the FLOSS community. It includes a description of the composition and roles of members within communities and what motivates various groups of individuals to participate in FLOSS. Section 3: After clarifying the role of learning in the FLOSS community the next chapter focuses on the content of learning processes in FLOSS. This chapter examines both, what skills are learnt and how the skills learnt within the FLOSS community are evaluated. The latter aspect is considered from the perspective of FLOSS community members as well as from the perspective of employers. Section 4: The fourth chapter examines how learning is organized within the FLOSS community. It examines the interaction between community members with regard to learning processes, the learning resources (except for technological resources) that are available and used within FLOSS communities, and the concrete learning processes. Section 5: This section looks at the technological resources used within FLOSS communities. FLOSS projects are almost exclusively administered online and one of the most important prerequisites for their coordination and cooperation is provided by the functionality of various communication and groupware tools. Section 6: The last section of the report proposes the project’s approach to learning in FLOSS. A preliminary set of guidelines as they apply to the principles of informal learning environments of FLOSS communities to improve ICT supported formal education are offered. These preliminary guidelines will be continuously amended in the following phase of the FLOSSCom project.	United Nations University UNU-Merit, NL; The Open
Oliver Alexy	2007-10	Putting a Value on Openness: The Effect of Product Source Code Releases on the Market Value of Firms	Paper	This study examines the effect of releasing the source code of commercial software products as open source software on the market value of firms. Using a sample of 30 software companies in the time span from 1 January 1999 to 30 April 2007, I find that market valuation is influenced by investor sentiment—abnormal returns take a curvilinear shape over time—and the business model firms choose for their OSS efforts—non-existence of an explicit revenue model is punished by the capital market. From my findings, I deduce several implications for IT-related event studies and research on open innovation processes.	TUM Business School, Technische Universität Münc
Oliver Alexy, Martin Leitner	2007-09	Norms, Rewards, and their Effect on the Motivation of Open Source Software Developers	Paper	In this study, we conduct a scenario experiment testing the effect of monetary rewards on intrinsic motivation of open source software (OSS) developers. While we observe no difference in intrinsic motivation between the payment and no payment scenario, total motivation increases when a monetary reward is offered. We find that self-reported interest increases in the payment scenario when there is a norm for payment, whereas it decreases when there is a norm for no payment. We conclude that, under certain preconditions, monetary rewards may well be used in OSS development.	TUM Business School, Technische Universität Münc
Oliver Alexy, Joachim Henkel	2007-08	Promoting the Penguin: Who is Advocating Open Source Software in Commercial Settings?	Paper	Most firms that use or develop software today face the questions of whether and how to engage in open source software. Yet, little is known about the process of OSS adoption and diffusion within corporations. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of Rogers (innovation diffusion) and Davis (Technology Acceptance Model), we develop a model of how job function influences individuals’ proclivity to support their employers’ adoption of OSS and OSS practices. We argue that job function determines which tasks in the software development process are part of an individual’s daily routine, and that different tasks are differentially affected by OSS. Our study is based on interviews with 25 individuals and a large-scale survey distributed to 249 participants in the telecommunications department of a multinational company. The results, although consistent with theoretical considerations, are nevertheless surprising. Distinguishing between developers, software testers, software architects, project managers, and managers, we find greater involvement in OSS activities to be favored most strongly by software testers, followed by software architects and managers. Excepting project managers, developers, despite having the most experience with OSS, are the least favorably disposed to greater corporate engagement in OSS. A corporation interested in adopting OSS and open innovation processes should thus take into account the job function-related incentives of each individual as well as various organizational factors. More generally, we propose that models developed to predict IT adoption behavior be extended to account for the ways in which individual adopters interact with the innovation at hand, which we maintain will be determined largely by their job functions.	TUM Business School, Technische Universität Münc
Martin Michlmayr	2007-03	Quality Improvement in Volunteer Free and Open Source Software Projects	Doctoral Thesis	Free and open source software has had a major impact on the computer industry since the late 1990s and has changed the way software is perceived, developed and deployed in many areas. Free and open source software, or FOSS, is typically developed in a collaborative fashion and the majority of contributors are volunteers. Even though this collaborative form of development has produced a significant body of software, the development process is often described as unstructured and unorganized. This dissertation studies the FOSS phenomenon from a quality perspective and investigates where improvements to the development process are possible. In particular, the focus is on release management since this is concerned with the delivery of a high quality product to end-users. This research has identified considerable interest amongst the FOSS community in a novel release management strategy, time based releases. In contrast to traditional development which is feature-driven, time based releases use time rather than features as the criterion for the creation of a new release. Releases are made after a specific interval, and new features that have been completed and sufficiently tested since the last release are included in the new version. This dissertation explores why, and under which circumstances, the time based release strategy is a viable alternative to feature-driven development and discusses factors that influence a successful implementation of this release strategy. It is argued that this release strategy acts as a coordination mechanism in large volunteer projects that are geographically dispersed. The time based release strategy allows a more controlled development and release process in projects which have little control of their contributors and therefore contributes to the quality of the output.	University of Cambridge
Görkem Çetin, Damiano Verzulli, Sandra Frings	2007-07	An Analysis of Involvement of HCI Experts in Distributed Software Development: Practical Issues	Paper	Abstract. Traditionally, free and open source software (F/OSS) developers have focused more on the features of a specific application, most of the time ignoring the necessity of user-centric design. This has mainly stemmed from the fact that developers have little interaction with HCI studies, knowledge bases and reports. Moreover, the lack of user interface designers has resulted in a lack of awareness of this area. As a consequence, the user centric design phenomenon within F/OSS applications has been neglected. In this paper, we have mentioned various problems that would slow down a F/OSS project development towards a user-engineered software, and investigated the ways that HCI experts and developers interact with each other and researched bug reporting systems by means of eligibility to issue usability bugs. For the conclusion part, we have explored possible ways to achieve a user-centric design in a project with asynchronous interaction among geographically distributed developers.	Gebze Institute of Technology, CINECA, University
Mehmet Gokturk, Gorkem Cetin	2007-07	Out of Box Experience Issues of Free and Open Source Software	Paper	Abstract. This study addresses the Out-Of-Box Experience (OOBE) usability issues of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) considering outcomes of distributed development process and high number of available product choices. A methodology is presented, usability experiments are conducted and results are discussed. The objective was to determine key factors that affect usability of F/OSS during OOBE and first hours of use. We concluded that OOBE of F/OSS was significant in software usability perception and possible adoption. User experience, visible structure, consistency and functionality of the interface had significant impact on OOBE and first hours of use. Neither online support, nor product box appearance appeared as important.	Gebze Institute of Technology
Giampaolo Garzarelli, Yasmina Reem Limam, Bjørn Thomassen	2007-08	Open Source Software and Economic Growth: A Classical Division of Labor Perspective	Paper	The article turns to classical economic insights on the division of labor and to institutional reasoning to identify some costs and benefits of Open Source Software (OSS) and proprietary software production. It suggests that, thanks to its licenses, OSS favors market expansion more than proprietary software does by tapping into spontaneous work input. The spontaneous tapping leads to a division of labor that exhibits what the article calls redundant economies. By generating a circle of knowledge growth, reuse, and sharing, redundant economies lead to increasing returns, which are crucial for economic growth.	School of Economic and Business Sciences, Universi
Sulayman K. Sowe, Ioannis Stamelos and Lefteris Angelis	2007-07	Understanding Knowledge Sharing Activities in Free/Open Source Software Projects: An Empirical Study	Paper	Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) projects are people-oriented and knowledge intensive software development environments. Many researchers focused on mailing lists to study coding activities of software developers. How expert software developers interact with each other and with non-developers in the use of community products have received little attention. This paper discusses the altruistic sharing of knowledge between knowledge providers and knowledge seekers in the Developer and User mailing lists of the Debian project. We analyze the posting and replying activities of the participants by counting the number of email messages they posted to the lists and the number of replies they made to questions others posted. We found out that participants interact and share their knowledge a lot, their positing activity is fairly highly correlated with their replying activity, the characteristics of posting and replying activities are different for different kinds of lists, and the knowledge sharing activity of self-organizing Free/Open Source communities could best be explained in terms of what we called ‘‘Fractal Cubic Distribution’’ rather than the power-law distribution mostly reported in the literature. The paper also proposes what could be researched in knowledge sharing activities in F/OSS projects mailing list and for what purpose. The research findings add to our understanding of knowledge sharing activities in F/OSS projects.	Department of Informatics, Aristotle University
Lorenzo Benussi	2006-12	The evolution of free/libre open source software.	Paper	The Free Libre Open Source Software represents an outstanding example of “open development model of technological knowledge”. It has been studied in several researches that produced valuable illustrations of the way it works. Our understanding of its principal features is growing exponentially and an entire new literature on open source has been created. However there appears to be an important gap in the literature: the origin of the phenomenon. The following chapter attempts to tackle this issue by analyzing the long-term technological history of the Free Open Source Software; the main research questions at stake are: “Is the phenomenon completely new? and if it is not totally new, where does it come from?” and, more generally, “how did open source software developed over time?”. As a consequence the present work focuses primarily on the analysis of the free/open source software history of technological change over a period of almost sixty years. I adopted a multidisciplinary approach to analyse the network of relations emerging between inventions and technological innovations, as well as economic determinants and intellectual property rights regimes throughout the period considered. Therefore, I attempted to investigate the origins of the phenomenon as a way of understanding its evolution.	Department of Economics, University of Turin
Carlo Daffara	2007-05	Business models in FLOSS-based companies	Paper	The sustainability of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) has recently become an important aspect of the overall open source phenomenon, and as such has received a significant research attention. Since 1999, several articles addressed the role of licenses, communities and business models in FLOSS-based companies, but mostly from a theoretical point of view. In this article, we present the result of a detailed analysis of 80 FLOSS-based companies and business models, using publicly available data on service offers, mailing list archives, online articles and when available public financial data. The result is a simplified and effective classification that can be used as a guide to companies willing to offer services in the same area, and an analysis on how the community process is influenced by the choice of licensing and business model.	conecta research
Si Chen	2007-05	An Economic Model of Open Source Software Adoption	Paper	This paper examines the competitive strengths of open source versus commercial software from an economic perspective. It uses a simple model of rational software selection to derive the competitive strengths of open source and commercial software models, how they can balance each other, and what the threshold or tipping point for mass adoption of open source software would be. It shows that open source software has the advantage when their commercial competitors have excessively high profit margins or when the software product’s features are not scalable due to heterogeneous user requirements.	Open Source Strategies, Inc.
Giuri Paola, Francesco Rullani, Salvatore Torrisi	2007-03	A test of Lazear's theory of entrepreneurship in the Open Source Software virtual community	Paper	This paper studies the emergence of entrepreneurs and their skill profile in the open source software community. We test the hypothesis that entrepreneurs, carrying out complex, multi-task activities, have more balanced skill sets compared with individuals who are less involved in project management activities. Our empirical analysis employs the SourceForge dataset containing information on 77,039 individuals working in 54,229 OSS projects. We estimate logit and ordered logit models to explore the likelihood that an individual is a project founder or manager. Our main regressors include individual attributes like skill level and diversity, and project-level controls. Results support our hypothesis.	Giuri: Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies; Rulla
Giuri Paola, Matteo Ploner, Francesco Rullani, Salvatore Torrisi	2006-07	Skills, Division of Labor and Performance in Collective Inventions. Evidence from the Open Source Software	Paper	This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that the level of skills of participants and their skill variety are important for project performance. Skill heterogeneity across participants is in line with two fundamental organizational features of the open source development model: team work and modular design. We also explore the hypothesis whether the level of modularization of project activities is an important predictor of performance. Our econometric estimations show that both skill level and skill heterogeneity positively affect projects' survival and performances. However, the impact of skill diversity is non linear. Design modularity is also positively associated with the performance of the project.	Giuri, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies; Plone
Francesco Rullani	2007-01	Dragging developers towards the core. How the Free/Libre/Open Source Software community enhances developers' contribution	Paper	The paper presents a dynamic perspective on the landscape of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) developers' motivations and tries to isolate mechanisms sustaining developers' contribution over time. The first part of the paper uses data gathered by the empirical studies relative to the FLOSS case to judge the relative importance of each group of incentives detected by the literature. In the second part of the paper, the same data are used to further characterize developers' motivations in dynamics terms, showing how the relative importance of different incentives changes over time. Drawing inspiration from these results, the third part of the paper identifies a specific mechanism fostering developers' contribution to the community activities, namely that: "Independently of developers' exogenous preferences, the more their exposure to the FLOSS community social environment, the more their contribution to the community activities". The key point of this hypothesis is that, if the exposure to the FLOSS community social environment is able to foster developers' contribution beyond the level granted by their predetermined preferences, this leads directly to the evidence that the FLOSS community is provided with a mechanism sustaining and enhancing developers' incentives to produce and diffuse code. In the last part of the paper, data relative to 14,497 developers working on SourceForge.net during two years (2001-2002) are employed to estimate a model testing the aforementioned hypothesis. Endogeneity problems are explicitly accounted for, and robustness checks are performed in order to make sure that the observed confirmation of the hypothesis is actually an empirically grounded result.	IVS - Copenhagen Business School
Francesco Rullani	2007-01	The debate and the community. 'Reflexive identity' in the FLOSS community	Paper	In order to simply communicate members of the Free/Open/Source Software community (FLOSS) have to "negotiate" the system of meanings they use to interface with the world and with the communitarian environment. But this means reshaping also their own visions of the world, redefining their identities. Community aims, principles and ethos act directly on members' identities, making them internalize the communitarian structure of rules. The first contribution of this paper is then showing how the concept of 'reflexivity' developed by Giddens can link Wenger's idea of community of practice to developers' incentives. The result is that it is possible to find a mechanism, the reflexive identify process, acting as an antidote to free-riding and thus sustaining the cooperative production of FLOSS. However, the same mechanism shows that the community can be defined as an unstable (i.e. subject to "revolutions") and dissipative (i.e. burning much more resources than the ones actually producing the outcome) object. On the theoretical side, the same mechanism asks for a wider conceptualization of practices. Using Habermas concept of 'practical interest' and 'communicative action' it is shown that the interaction between developers distributes among the different layers constituting the community debate, and that each one of these layers, not only practices, has a crucial role in defining developers' identities and thus their motivations.	IVS - Copenhagen Business School
Stefano Comino and Fabio M. Manenti	2007-05	Dual Licensing in Open Source Software Markets	Paper	Dual licensing has proved to be a sustainable business model for various commercial software vendors employing open source strategies. In this paper we study the main characteristics of dual licensing and under which conditions it represents a profitable commercial strategy. We show that dual licensing is a form of versioning, whereby the software vendor uses the open source licensing terms in order to induce commercial customers to select the proprietary version of the software. Furthermore, we show that the software vendor prefers dual licensing to a fully proprietary strategy when the customers are very sensitive to the reciprocal terms of the open source license.	University of Padua, Italy
Peter C. Rigby and Daniel M. German	2006-01	A preliminary examination of code review processes in open source projects	Paper	In this paper, we provide preliminary answers to the following questions regarding OSS peer review or inspection. What is the patch process and review process used by the projects? What types of review does a the project use? Why are patches rejected? What percentage of patches are rejected? Who performs the review? Are the top developers also the top reviewers? When are reviews performed? What is the frequency of review? How long do reviews take to perform? How does the patch size affect the review? How does merit-based trust among actors affect the review? Are more trusted individuals reviewed less often? How much feedback is provided in the review? What kinds of non-source code patches are reviewed? How does the kind of patch affect the review? What affect does reviewing have on other elements of the patch process? What is the relationship between reviewing and testing? The first two questions are answered in a qualitative manner for GCC, Linux, Mozilla, and Apache. The remaining questions are answered for the Apache project. The most striking similarities among projects is there use of a pre-commit review and requests for small, complete, independent patches. The Apache project also uses a post-commit review of trusted members. Reviews in the Apache project occur very frequently and usually have a review interval of hours. A small core group of reviewers conduct over 80% of reviews for Apache; however, the number of and actual individuals fluctuates over the 9 years of data we examine.	University of Victoria
Ed Sherwood-Smith	2006-09	Open Source & The Irish Software Industry?	Masters Thesis	The open source software movement is a global phenomenon that is having a significant impact on the global software industry. It is changing the way in which software companies and people view the software development process. It is changing the way in which software companies capture value. It is commoditizing segments of the software market and is creating new business models and new ways of capturing value. It is lauded by some and vilified by others. It is often painted in a biblical light – David taking on Goliath. Yet, many of the Goliaths’ are also benefiting from this movement. This dissertation explores this - How can companies manage the impacts of the open source software movement to their advantage? This research examines the phenomenon in the context of the Irish Industry. Through a review of the existing literature this dissertation develops and exploratory framework for investigating different factors that might be influential in looking at how Indigenous Irish Software firms might manage the impacts of open source software movement. It weaves facets of different research areas together to produce this framework. The framework is then tested using several techniques including a qualitative survey. The dissertation includes several sections that apply the framework in order to analyze and develop profiles of several different firms. These profiles are then used to look at some of the different strategies and tactics available to firms. In many cases, examples are drawn from the global software industry to illustrate these approaches. The research concludes that there are factors that influence how a firm can manage the impact of the open source movement. It also builds on the initial framework to offer a more complete approach to understanding the factors that change the way in which firms manage the impacts of the open source software movement.	Smurfit School of Business, UCD
Yi Wang, Defeng Guo	2007-03	EMOS/1: An Evolution Metrics Model for Open Source Software	Paper	Open Source Software (OSS) has become the subject of much commercial and academic interest of last. Providing quantitative metrics for OSS evolution has also become an urgent issue. However, most existing studies of software evolution have been performed on systems developed within a single company using traditional management techniques. These metrics models are not suitable for measuring OSS evolution. In this paper, we designed a preliminary evolution metrics model named EMOS/1 which contains a set of new metrics defined for evaluating OSS specially. The most significant novelty of this model is that it takes some properties of Open Source Community (OSC) into consideration. In another word, we measure the evolution of OSS and OSC together. We also provide a lightweight case study on Ubuntu project using EMOS/1. We find out the Open Source Community and its members also play essential role in OSS evolution. We expect our model can bring better understandings and explanations of phenomena in open source development and evolution.	Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sh
Jyh-An Lee	2006-12	New Perspectives on Public Goods Production: Policy Implications of Open Source Software	Paper	This article reveals some empirical data regarding the trend of evolving open source software (OSS) policies globally. Additionally, this article investigates why so many governments are considering support of OSS development, and weighs the pros and cons of such policies. The ultimate conclusion is that when two systems are equally suitable, governments may reasonably choose OSS over proprietary software because software industry market failures may justify such support of OSS development. While governments considering supporting OSS are primarily concerned with significant switching costs and incompatibility problems, OSS is actually superior to proprietary software because it increases compatibility and consequently decreases switching costs in the long term. Further, OSS will not only help developing countries build their information technology capabilities, but will also promote competition in the software market.	Stanford Law School
PaolaDiMaio	2007-01	Towards an Open Ontology for Emergency Response	Paper	Emergency Response and Relief Coordination Efforts are evolving to leverage the efficiencies offered by the internet in the area of real time communication among agents and stakeholders. There is widespread consensus both in the technical and ER community that to improve efficiency of response, information must be shared and web based protocols must be used [22]. In addition to known technical and non-technical obstacles that inhibit the effective and seamless coordination of operations, we identify issues that challenge the development of functional information and communication models. Recent studies in ontology engineering, and evidence from direct observations of open-source work groups in this field, point to the need for an easy to use 'open' conceptual and semantic framework, defined here broadly as ‘Open Ontology’ (OOnt), and a corresponding design and implementation methodology that can be referenced unambiguously and universally by developers and users of information systems designed to support ER operations.	MaeFahLuangUniversity
Sverre Helge Bolstad	2006-11	Learning and knowledge in FLOSS - Situated learning and organizational knowledge-conversion in community-based free/libre open source software development	Masters Thesis	In free/libre open source software development (FLOSS), groups of developers and users working in geographically dispersed settings are supported by a dense network of interactions. The participants are highly skilled in the use of information- and communication technologies, and build the software by relying on extensive peer production and through skillful use of communication tools available on the Internet. In building the software, explicit, formal and structured knowledge in the form of documents, objects, machines and external sources are communicated and stored in ways that make it available for others in the present and future. This knowledge make up an important resource for the members and developers of the community. Another kind, or aspect, of knowledge, often called tacit or soft knowledge, is informal, unstructured, resides in people, and are difficult, or maybe impossible, to articulate. The questions guiding this research is how knowledge, both explicit and tacit, is shared, and how a new member is able take part in the practice and knowledge of the community. The theory of legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice describes an environment for people to develop knowledge through interaction with others in an environment where knowledge is created, nurtured and sustained. By taking part in the practice as a participant observer, through virtual ethnography, the author describes the practice and communication in this decentralized and knowledge-intensive process. Taking it a step further, the knowledge of the community, and how it is shared within the ‘organization’, is explored with a model for managing dynamic aspects of organizational knowledge-creation. The central theme here is that knowledge is created through a continuous dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge. Logs from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and interviews with core developers are analyzed, and the author argues that the Plone community is able to share both kinds of knowledge in a complex web of resources and interaction. The analysis further suggest that the FLOSS development-model facilitates access, transparency and participation on premisses that are important for learning.	Department of media and information studies, Facul
Nicolas Schudel	2006-09	Commons Identity: A Conceptual Model for Designing Brand Identity in Free and Open Source Software Projects	Bachelors Thesis	Purpose: Open Source is a popular term to describe a development and production method based on the free sharing of information. The computer software industry has embraced Open Source practices increasingly since the nineties. Participation in Free and Open Source Software projects is commonly voluntary and there is a need for specialized knowledge surrounding the production of software. This report focuses on the topic area of designing brand identity. Objective: To create a conceptual model for designing brand identity in Free and Open Source Software projects based on Wheeler’s Brand Identity Process of 2006. Design: Participatory action research with three cycles and five interviews conducted online. Participants: Three Free and Open Source Software projects named Sociopath, OpenEats, and Jajuk. Five industry professionals with expertise in branding and Open Source development. Results: Wheeler’s brand identity process is modified towards the Open Source method and incorporates community votes and commons-based peer-review. Outcomes specific to Free and Open Source Software projects are included as exemplary brand identity assets. Furthermore, a preparation phase is added showing the entry into the project’s community. Conclusions: The created model is a practical tool for designing brand identity in Free and Open Source Software projects. Further applications of the model are needed for its evaluation.	SAE Institute Byron Bay
Kristijan Spirov	2006-08	Free/Open Source Software And Business: Forming A Migration Policy	Masters Thesis	This paper explores the non-technical issues that arise with migration to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in Large Scaled Enterprises (LSEs), with special emphasis on human and social issues. The result of the study is a conceptual framework for effective addressing of non-technical issues in a migration policy. The study is of exploratory nature and uses secondary research findings from multiple disciplines: free and open source software, management of human resources, power and conflict, system migration, information systems development, motivation, change management, organizational psychology and social informatics; including anecdotal evidence from FLOSS migrations in practice. A holistic approach has been used during the analysis of the migration issues, based on the key principles of social informatics that IT technology and social contexts are interdependent. The relationship between FLOSS migrations and different organizational contexts is elaborated and it has been found out how lack of vendor support for FLOSS motivates LSEs to improve their self-support of own IT infrastructures. In-depth analysis is performed of the individual and social impact that FLOSS migrations have on enterprise IT personnel, as well as how different individual factors such as age, gender, personal motivations and beliefs may impact on individual migration efforts. The social differences between typical enterprise IT personnel and the FLOSS community are elaborated, as well as how to overcome the communication gap between them. The role of end users in FLOSS migration and relevant issues are discussed. It is proved why staged migration is the most viable option and it is shown how it is related to human and social factors. At the end, a conceptual framework for description of non-technical FLOSS migration issues is discussed, which can be used as a helpful tool in a migration policy.	The University of Sheffield, CITY Liberal Studies
Joachim Schroer & Guido Hertel	2007-01	Voluntary Engagement in an Open Web-based Encyclopedia: Wikipedians, and Why They Do It	Paper	The online encyclopedia Wikipedia can be considered as a highly successful Open Content project, written and maintained completely by volunteers. Little is known, however, about the motives and interests of these volunteers. Results from an online survey among 106 contributors to the German Wikipedia project are presented. As potential predictors of contributors’ engagement and satisfaction, both motives derived from social sciences (e.g., costs-benefits, valence of the Wikipedia goals, identification with Wikipedia, etc.) as well as perceived task characteristics (e.g., task significance, autonomy, skill variety, etc.) were measured. The results reveal that satisfaction ratings of contributors are determined by perceived benefits, identification with the Wikipedia community, and task characteristics. Contributors’ engagement (e.g., hours per week) was particularly determined by their tolerance for opportunity costs and the experienced characteristics of their tasks, the latter effect being partially mediated by intrinsic motivation. Most relevant task characteristics both for contributors’ engagement and satisfaction were autonomy, task significance, and skill variety. Additional motives reported by Wikipedia contributors suggest the importance of generativity.	University of Wuerzburg
Andrea Bonaccorsi, Dario Lorenzi, Monica Merito, Cristina Rossi	2007-01	Do firms take part in the projects of the OS community. Some preliminary evidence and a research agenda	Paper	The Open Source (OS) software has progressively gained economic importance in recent years, and more and more commercial firms are getting involved, to various extents, in the OS movement. While a number of studies have investigated motivations and business models of OS-based software companies, very few works have examined whether and how firms actively participate to open projects. This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the role and the activities of software houses in community developed projects. The research also proposes an original methodology of large-scale primary data collection from OS project repositories and linked Web sites. The findings show how different today’s OS movement is from its origins and how important firm involvement has become, not only numerically but also for the deepness of its impact on community projects. Finally, further research developments are suggested.	Univeristy of Pisa, Politecnico di Milano
Paul A. David & Francesco Rullani	2007-01	Micro-dynamics of Free and Open Source Software Development. Lurking, laboring and launching new projects on SourceForge	Paper	Quantitative methods are employed to describe two fundamental processes in the creation of free (libre) and open source software (FLOSS) that are at work in the collaborative development environment of the SourceForge.Net platform: resource mobilization and "entrepreneurial initiatives" which generate new development projects. The micro dynamics of the individuals' involvements in these processes are analysed by defining "activity states" that correspond to "lurking" (not contributing or contributing to projects without become a member), "laboring" (joining one or more projects as members), and "launching" (founding one or more projects). The transition probability matrices constructed from observations on the activities of 222,835 individuals who registered on SF.net (during a 14-month period, mainly in 2001) characterize first-order Markov chains describing processes that are ergodic. The computation of the limiting "equilibrium" distribution of individual joining and launching activities is not used here to produce long-run predictions, because the time window of the available data is too short. Instead, it is conceived as an instrument to isolate the main forces acting in the underlying entrepreneurial and recruitment dynamics at work on the platform "shaking off" the weaker tendencies. It is shown that, although only a small proportion of the considered cohorts of SF.net registrants become even minimally active, the active "core" of project members and project founders is able to attract an increasing number of developers. SourceForge is seen to be more than an attractor of projects that are being "born again" under open source licenses: this virtual collaborative development environment shares the regenerative properties of tangible "industrial districts" that give rise to new, innovative enterprises. Implications for the exploitation and exploitation processes at work in the FLOSS model and about its sustainability are also derived.	David: Stanford University & Oxford Internet Insti
Gilberto Câmara, Frederico Fonseca	2007-01	Information Policies and Open Source Software in Developing Countries	Paper	Many authors propose that open source software (OSS) is a good strategy to bring information and communication technologies to developing countries. Nevertheless, the use of OSS needs to be more than just adopting Linux as the standard for operating systems. Adoption of OSS is not only a choice of software, but also a means of acquiring knowledge. Developing countries have to use OSS as a way to gain knowledge about the technology itself and as a way of creating technology products that fit their specific needs. In this article, the authors introduce a model of OSS based on its essential characteristics to understand how developing countries may use OSS to achieve their development goals. The authors argue that there are two defining properties of any open source software. The first property is the potential for shared conceptualization and the second is the potential for modularity. By assessing how each OSS project satisfies these two conditions, a taxonomy is built for open source projects. This taxonomy will help the development of more sensible policies to promote the use of open source in developing countries.	National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Braz
Andrea Bonaccorsi, Monica Merito, Cristina Rossi, Lucia Piscitello	2007-01	Open Source and the software industry. How firms do business out of an open innovation paradigm	Paper	Open Source Software (OSS) represents an “open innovation” paradigm based on knowledge produced and shared by developers and users. The paper inquires how OSS challenges the three Teece’s building blocks. New findings from a large survey of European software companies, show that within the OSS paradigm: (i) OSS can be a sustainable business model even in the absence of any appropriability; (ii) complementary assets are distributed collectively and made widely available without the need for dedicated contractual arrangements; (iii) a de facto dominant design may stem from a community of users/producers even independently of the presence of powerful large companies.	Politecnico di Milano, University of Pisa
Param Vir Singh, Ming Fan, Yong Tan	2007-01	An Empirical Investigation of Code Contribution, Communication Participation and Release Strategies in Open Source Software Development: A Conditional Hazard Model Approach	Paper	This study uses data from over 200 open source software (OSS) projects hosted at Sourceforge to empirically examine how OSS development characteristics affect project progress. Consistent with prior studies, we find that core developers (i.e., top 20 % of the most contributing developers) develop about 80% of the code. We also find that a group of developers that is about 50% larger than the core group is responsible for 80% of the communication. On average, the top 30% developers contribute about 81% of the messages. It is observed that projects with a clearly identified core group of developers conducting most of the coding are more efficient for project progress. We also find that highly participative peripheral group in communication positively affects project progress. In addition, high level of communication interactivity, measured by the number of email threads and average thread depth, enables a project to progress well. Our results also show that projects that draw upon the larger OSS community for beta testing progress faster. We find that the projects that do not progress well are associated with the following major factors: (i) lack of a core developer group, (ii) dormant peripheral group in communication, (iii) low communication interactivity exemplified by the lack of depth in threaded communications, and (iv) over-dependence on internal community for beta testing.	University of Washington Business School
Chris Jensen and Walt Scacchi	2007-05	# Role Migration and Advancement Processes in OSSD Projects: A Comparative Case Study	Paper	Socio-technical processes have come to the forefront of recent analysis of the open source software development (OSSD) world. Interest in making these processes explicit is mounting from industry and the software process community, as well as among those who may become contributors to an OSSD organization. This paper serves to close this gap by providing an analysis of the role migration and project career advancement process, and role-sets within, that we have observed within three large OSSD project organizations: Mozilla.org, Apache.org, and NetBeans.org.	Institute for Software Research, UC Irvine
Sulayman Sowe,Ioannis Stamelosa,Lefteris Angelisa	2006-11	Identifying Knowledge Brokers that Yield Software Engineering Knowledge in OSS Projects	Paper	Much research on open source software development concentrates on developer lists and other software repositories to investigate what motivates professional software developers to participate in open source software projects. Little attention has been paid to individuals who spend valuable time in lists helping participants on some mundane yet vital project activities. Using three Debian lists as a case study we investigate the impact of knowledge brokers and their associated activities in open source projects. Social network analysis was used to visualize how participants are affiliated with the lists. The network topology reveals substantial community participation. The consequence of collaborating in mundane activities for the success of open source software projects is discussed. The direct beneficiaries of this research are in the identification of knowledge experts in open source software projects.	Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of
Vadén, Tere	2006-12	'Intellectual Property' and Knowledge Creation in Disorganisations	Paper	Given the current forms of economic production and corporate markets, the liberating and democratic potential of digital information is counteracted by the concentration of media ownership, as well as by policy, legislation, and the development of proprietary forms of technology. The notion of 'intellectual property' produces artificial scarcity where digital technology could remove it. This tension between the proprietary and non-proprietary aspects of the information society can be analysed by looking at two types of knowledge creation: organisational and disorganisational. While organisational knowledge work can benefit from a notion of 'intellectual property', disorganisational knowledge work is disrupted, if not destroyed, by proprietary barriers on information. This is unfortunate if and when the crucial innovations and ethical potential of the information society are connected to disorganisational communities, even though the organisational type is more visible and better represented in the traditional structures of society.	Hypermedialab University of Tampere, Finland
Param Vir Singh, Nara Youn, Yong Tan	2006-12	Developer Learning Dynamics in Open Source Software Projects: A Hidden Markov Model Analysis	Paper	This work proposes a dynamic model of developer learning in open source software (OSS) projects. A Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is proposed to explain how the code contribution behaviors of OSS de-velopers change as their levels of knowledge on their projects increase. In this model, discrete hidden states represent the unobserved knowledge levels of developers, and their observed code contribution be-haviors are modeled as state dependent. Developers’ knowledge levels evolve as they learn about the pro-jects over time. Two modes of learning are considered: learning-by-doing (code development) and learn-ing through interactions with peers. The model is calibrated using data spanning six years for 25 OSS pro-jects and 251 developers hosted at Sourceforge. The proposed model identifies three knowledge states (high, medium, and low) and estimates the impact of the two modes of learning on the transition of devel-opers between the three knowledge states. The model results suggest that in the low knowledge state de-velopers exhibit the greatest inertia, followed by those in the medium and high states. Both modes of learning are found to have varying impact across the three knowledge states. Interactions with peers ap-pear to be an important source of learning for developers in all states. A developer in the low state learns only through participation in threads started by others. Prior code contribution and starting discussion by initiating threads do not impact the knowledge level of a developer in the low state. Initiating threads, par-ticipating in threads started by others, and prior code contributions have positive impacts on the knowl-edge level of a developer in the medium or high state and, hence, influence his long term code contribu-tion behavior. Explanations for these varying impacts of learning activities on the transitions of develop-ers between the three states are provided. We also find a lack of persistence of knowledge in all states. The HMM better describes the data than a latent class model which would suggests that the learning ac-tivities have a long term, dynamic impact, rather than an immediate, static impact on the code contribu-tion behavior of a developer.	University of Washington Business School
Jamil Alkhatib	2006-11	Free Open Source as a Technology Transfer Tool in the Arab World	Masters Thesis	The Arab world has so far minimum contribution to the current global innovation system. Technology transfer is a major factor behind such weakness. Within the context of the Arab world, the Free Open Source (FOS)process could be adopted as a cheap and fast alternative tool for technology transfer. This study will focus on the effectiveness of FOS process on the Technology Transfer and how it will improve the cooperation between research and industrial institutes working in the ICT sector in the Arab world.	FH-Brandenburg
Demazière D., Horn F., Jullien N.	2006-10	How free software developers work. The mobilization of “distant communities”	Paper	The work of free software developers is an individual activity carried out in extremely heterogeneous conditions and a collective action with original production methods. We propose to analyze this work starting with the paradoxical notion of a “distant community”, that aims to illustrate the tension between, on the one hand, the strength of the sense of belonging to a specific world identifiable in the discourse of the participants and, on the other hand, the distances that separate the contributors in terms of relationships, status, and background. In doing this the aim is to produce a description, necessarily plural, of the different forms of “distant communities” that enables the production of goods in unique social and organizational conditions. More generally speaking, this notion points to methods of coordination that combine two forms of collective action that are usually contrary and antagonistic: a communitarian form based on the subjective feeling of belonging to the same community and a form of partnership based on the coordination of common interests and sharing of objectives (Tönnies, 1887, Weber, 1921). At first, we examine the ways the individual participants organize themselves in order to contribute to a project and we focus on the forms of cooperation and coordination used to deal with the constraints of efficiency and quality associated with the distribution of a product. Secondly, we look at the other side of the coin and examine the ways individual participants take action and we underline the mechanisms of commitment and participation that account for their contribution to the production of free software. These two dimensions, that in our opinion are inseparable, are explored through a survey carried out with free software developers.	Versailles University, Lille University, M@rsouin
Demazière D., Horn F., Jullien N.	1985-01	How free software developers work. The mobilization of “distant communities”	Paper	The work of free software developers is an individual activity carried out in extremely heterogeneous conditions and a collective action with original production methods. We propose to analyze this work starting with the paradoxical notion of a “distant community”, that aims to illustrate the tension between, on the one hand, the strength of the sense of belonging to a specific world identifiable in the discourse of the participants and, on the other hand, the distances that separate the contributors in terms of relationships, status, and background. In doing this the aim is to produce a description, necessarily plural, of the different forms of “distant communities” that enables the production of goods in unique social and organizational conditions. More generally speaking, this notion points to methods of coordination that combine two forms of collective action that are usually contrary and antagonistic: a communitarian form based on the subjective feeling of belonging to the same community and a form of partnership based on the coordination of common interests and sharing of objectives (Tönnies, 1887, Weber, 1921). At first, we examine the ways the individual participants organize themselves in order to contribute to a project and we focus on the forms of cooperation and coordination used to deal with the constraints of efficiency and quality associated with the distribution of a product. Secondly, we look at the other side of the coin and examine the ways individual participants take action and we underline the mechanisms of commitment and participation that account for their contribution to the production of free software. These two dimensions, that in our opinion are inseparable, are explored through a survey carried out with free software developers.	Versailles University, Lille University, M@rsouin
Yu-Wei Lin and Enrico Zini	August 2006	An Empirical Study on Implementing FLOSS in Schools	Paper	This empirical paper shows how free/libre open source software (FLOSS) contributes to mutual and collaborative learning in an educational environment. Unlike proprietary software, FLOSS allows extensive customisation of software and supports the needs of local users better. In this paper, we observes how implementing FLOSS in an Italian high school challenges the conventional relationship between end users themselves (e.g. teachers and students) and that between users and developers. The findings will shed some light on the social aspects of FLOSS-based computerization - including the role of FLOSS in social and organizational change in educational environments and the ways that the social organization of FLOSS are influenced by social forces and social practices.	Yu-Wei Lin (National Centre for E-Social Science,
Ibrahim Izlem GOZUKELES	July 2006	FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE HACKERS IN TURKEY	Paper	In recent years, there has been growing interest of governments and firms for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). However, FOSS is still a puzzlement for a wide spectrum of academic disciplines. Social scientists ask why FOSS hackers participate in FOSS if they do not get any monetary rewards. On the other hand firms ask, how a firm can earn money from FOSS. In this study, motivations of FOSS hackers and firms are taken as an interrelated phenomenon. This study discusses FOSS from the view of hackers in Turkey. In that respect, social conditions that make hackers voluntarily contribute to the FOSS projects and their relationship with the commercial world are explored. 1
Barcellini, F., Detienne, F., Burkhardt, J.M., Sack, W.	November 2005	Thematic Coherence and Quotation Practices in Open Source Software design-oriented online discussions	Paper	This paper presents an analysis of online discussions in Open Source Software (OSS) design. The objective of our work is to understand and model the dynamics of OSS design that take place in mailing list exchanges. We show how quotation practices can be used to locate design relevant data in discussion archives. OSS developers use quotation as a mechanism to maintain the discursive context. To retrace thematic coherence in the online discussions of a major OSS project, Python, we follow how messages are linked through quotation practices. We compare our quotation-based analysis with a more conventional analysis: a thread-based of the reply-to links between messages. The advantages of a quotation-based analysis over a thread-based analysis are outlined. Our analysis reveals also the links between the social structure and elements in the discussion space and how it shapes influence in the design process.	INRIA, "Cognition and Cooperation in Design" team
Economides, Nicholas & Evangelos Katsamakas	2005 - 10	Two-sided competition of proprietary vs. open source technology platforms and the implications for the software industry	full paper (285 KB)	Technology platforms, such as Microsoft Windows, are the hubs of technology industries. We develop a framework to characterize the optimal two-sided pricing strategy of a platform firm, that is, the pricing strategy towards the direct users of the platform as well as towards firms offering applications that are complementary to the platform. We compare industry structures based on a proprietary platform (such as Windows) with those based on an open-source platform (such as Linux) and analyze the structure of competition and industry implications in terms of pricing, sales, profitability, and social welfare. We find that, when the platform is proprietary, the equilibrium prices for the platform, the applications, and the platform access fee for applications may be below marginal cost, and we characterize demand conditions that lead to this. The proprietary applications sector of an industry based on an open source platform may be more profitable than the total profits of a proprietary platform industry. When users have a strong preference for application variety, the total profits of the proprietary industry are larger than the total profits of an industry based on an open source platform. The variety of applications is larger when the platform is open source. When a system based on an open source platform with an independent proprietary application competes with a proprietary system, the proprietary system is likely to dominate the open source platform industry both in terms of marketshare and profitability. This may explain the dominance of Microsoft in the market for PC operating systems.	NYU Stern & Fordham University
Economides, Nicholas & Evangelos Katsamakas	2005 - 10	Linux vs. Windows: A comparison of application and platform innovation incentives for open source and proprietary software platforms	full paper (178 KB)	The paper analyzes and compares the investment incentives of platform and application developers for Linux and Windows. We find that the level of investment in applications is larger when the operating system is open source rather than proprietary. The comparison of the levels of investment in the operating systems depends, among others, on reputation effects and the number of developers. The paper also develops a short case study comparing Windows and Linux and identifies new directions for open source software research.	NYU Stern & Fordham University
Michlmayr, Martin , Francis Hunt & David Probert	2005 - 07	Quality Practices and Problems in Free Software Projects	full paper (258 KB)	Free software and open source projects are often perceived to be of high quality. It has been suggested that the high level of quality found in some free software projects is related to the open development model which promotes peer review. While the quality of some free software projects is comparable to if not better than that of closed source software, not all free software projects are successful and of high quality. Even mature and successful projects face quality problems, some of which are related to the unique characteristics of free software and open source as a distributed development model based primarily on volunteers. In exploratory interviews performed with free software and open source developers, common quality practices as well as actual quality problems have been identified. The results of these interviews are presented in this paper to take stock of the current status of quality in free software projects and to act as a starting point for the implementation of quality process improvement strategies.	University of Cambridge
Michlmayr, Martin	2005 - 10	Software Process Maturity and the Success of Free Software Projects	full paper (211 KB)	The success of free software and open source projects has increased interest in utilizing the open source model for mature software development. However, the ad hoc nature of open source development may result in poor quality software or failures for a number of volunteer projects. In this paper, projects from SourceForge are assessed to test the hypothesis that there is a relationship between process maturity and the success of free software and open source projects. This study addresses the question of whether the maturity of particular software processes differs in unsuccessful and unsuccessful projects. Processes are identified which are key factors in successful free software projects. The insights gained from this study can be used improve the software process used by free software projects.	University of Melbourne
Senyard, Anthony & Martin Michlmayr	2004 - 12	How to Have a Successful Free Software Project	full paper (161 KB)	Some free software projects have been extremely successful. This rise to prominence can be attributed to the high quality and suitability of the software. This quality and suitability is achieved through an elaborate peer-review process performed by a large community of users, who act as co-developers to identify and correct software defects and add features. Although this process is crucial to the success of free software projects, there is more to the free software development than the creation of a ?bazaar?. In this paper we draw on existing free software projects to define a lifecycle model for free software. This paper then explores each phase of the lifecycle model and agrees that, while the bazaar phase attracts the most attention, it is the initial modular design that accommodates diverse interventions. Moreover, it is the period of transition from the initial group to the larger community based development that is crucial in determining whether a free software project will succeed or fail.	University of Melbourne
Jullien,Nicolas & Jean-Beno?t Zimmermann	2005 - 10	New approaches to intellectual property : from open software to knowledge based industrial activities	full paper (600 KB)	We analyze the question of intellectual property in computer software, showing that both copyright and patents do not fit to the specificities and needs of this industry. The alternative model of Open Source Software, based on a very new juridical concept called GPL "General Public License", tends to take a growing importance. We explain its main characteristics, which consist to impose to the producers to disclose the source-code of the concerned programs and of any further improvement if they re-distribute/resell it. We show that by doing that it introduces a totally different approach of intellectual property within industrial strategies, based on a weaker intellectual protection. We discuss the consequences of such a movement in intistitutional and public policy terms and we enlarge the approach to understand its exemplariness, in the context of a knowledge based economy, for a growing number of industrial activities.	M@rsouin, CNRS
Cooksey, Robert	2005 - 09	I Walk the Open Road: Toward an Open Source Philosophy	MS Thesis (611 KB)	This paper addresses the concept of "Open Source" in a philosophical way. It argues that open source is a virtual entity with ontological significance beyond the realm of the software movement that granted its naming. The paper includes an examination of the technical language surrounding open source software, progresses through a philosophical exploration of this language removed from the specificity of computer languages and technologies, and then returns to an analysis of The Open Source Definition in the light of the philosophical investigation.	University of South Florida and European Graduate
Rai, Arti	2005 - 01	Open and Collaborative Biomedical Research: Theory and Evidence	full paper (189 KB)	Although a few commentators have discussed briefly the application of open source-type principles to biomedical research, they have not analyzed carefully how the model is actually being used. In this paper, I draw upon an ongoing, multi-year empirical inquiry into the role of intellectual property in computational biology and associated efforts to evaluate the extent to which the open and collaborative research model may promote socially desirable biomedical innovation ? that is, innovation that produces marginal health benefits in excess of its marginal costs.	Duke University Law School
Wynants, Marleen & Jan Cornelis (Editors)	2005 - 09	How open is the future (Book - Under creative Commons	link	There are two reasons why the free and open-source software issue has become such an inspirational and powerful force today: the rise of the Internet and the growing tendency to protect all intellectual property. Internet technology made it possible to handle massive decentralized projects and irreversibly changed our personal communication and information research. Intellectual property, on the other hand, is a legal instrument which - due to recent excesses - became the symbol of exactly the opposite of what it had been developed for: the protection of the creative process. As a result, free-thinking programmers, scientists, artists, designers, engineers and scholars are daily trying to come up with new ways of creating and sharing knowledge.	Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Lindman, Juho	2005 - 09	Effects of Open Source Software on the Business Patterns of Software Industry	MS Thesis (225 KB)	Open source software is a phenomenon that has potential to change the traditional patterns of business behavior. Research committed so far has not evaluated the entire scale of potential changes, which is the purpose of this explorative thesis. Previous literature on the subject can be divided into history of the phenomenon, explaining the nature of the phenomenon, and a more general discussion about strategies and business models in the software business. By using these theories this thesis provides a framework for analysing the entire phenomenon. The framework is put to use in the empirical part. Data consist of interviews of experts in the field. An analysis of the data is done using narrative methods. The analysis yield eleven narratives that describe the phenomenon. Four of the narratives reveal effects. On the basis of the responses gathered, open source software can change competition environment, customer expectations, the importance of competence, and platform thinking.	Helsinki School of Economics
Watson, Andrew	2005 - 09	Reputation in Open Source	full paper (59 KB)	The 1990s and early 2000s have seen the dramatic rise of open source software, with the Linux operating system as the most salient example. This article focuses on the role of reputation in open source. It describes the importance of the reputations of hackers, software vendors, open source projects, and the open source movement. Although reputation has long been used as an explanation of hacker motivation, this article applies the concept of reputation at multiple levels, and identifies the inter-level relations.	Northeastern University
Beussi, Lorenzo	2005 - 09	Analysing the technological history of the Open Source Phenomenon: Stories from the Free Software Evolution	full paper (1.1 MB)	The Free Libre Open Source Software represents an outstanding example of open development model of technological knowledge. It has been studied in several researches that produced valuable illustrations of the way it works. Our understanding of its principal features is growing exponentially and an entire new literature on open source has been created. However there appears to be an important gap in the literature: the origin of the phenomenon. The paper attempts to tackle this issue by analyzing the long-term technological history of Free Open Source Software; the main research questions at stake are: is the phenomenon completely new? and if it is not totally new, where it comes form? and, more generally, how open source software developed over time? As a consequence the present work focuses primarily on the analysis of the fee/open source software history of technological change over a period of almost sixty years. I adopted a multidisciplinary approach to analyse the network of relations emerging between inventions and technological innovations, as well as economic determinants and intellectual property rights regimes throughout the period considered. Thus, I attempt to investigate the origins of the phenomenon as a way of understanding its evolution.	University of Turin
de Souuza, Cleidson, John Froehlich & Paul Dourish	2005 - 11	Seeking the Source: Software Source Code as a Social and Technical Artifact	full paper (1.4 MB)	In distributed software development, two sorts of dependencies can arise. The structure of the software system itself can create dependencies between software elements, while the structure of the development process can create dependencies between software developers. Each of these both shapes and reflects the development process. Our research concerns the extent to which, by looking uniformly at artifacts and activities, we can uncover the structures of software projects, and the ways in which development processes are inscribed into software artifacts. We show how a range of organizational processes and arrangements can be uncovered in software repositories, with implications for collaborative work in large distributed groups such as open source communities.	Universidade Federal do Par
Lin, Yuwei	2005 - 08	A Techno-Feminist Perspective on the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development	full paper (550 KB)	This paper tries to analyse the FLOSS development from a "techno-feminist" perspective (Wajcman 2004). Staying away from a reductionism that simplifies the gender issue in the FLOSS community to the level of a fight between men and women, the issues I attempt to address include not only the inequality that women face in computing, but also other inequalities that other users face mainly emerging from the power relationships between expert and lay (namely, developer and user) in software design. Instead of splitting women and men in the FLOSS development, this analysis helps motivate both men and women to work together, reduce the gender gap, and improve the disadvantaged statuses of women and a wider users community in the FLOSS development.	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Klincewicz, Krzysztof	2005 - 08	Innovativeness of open source software projects	full paper (525 KB)	The paper addresses an ongoing debate about the innovativeness of open source projects and critically evaluates the innovative potential of 500 most active projects registered by SourceForge.net. The analysis is based on a proposed framework, distinguishing between radical inventions, technology / platform modifications, and marketing innovations. Research findings include relatively low levels of technical newness in the studies sample, alongside high interest of developers and users in the innovative projects. The article discusses the underlying mechanisms, restricting innovativeness of community-driven open source efforts, and postulates the establishment of an institution of idea brokers playing roles corresponding to venture capitalists in the commercial software domain.	Tokyo Institute of Technology & Warsaw University
Chance, Tom	2005 - 08	The Hacker Ethic and Meaningful Work	full paper (170 KB)	This paper begins with the following proposition: given that we spend a large proportion of our time working, a just society will provide or encourage meaningful work. Hackers have created and broadened spaces where working life can unfold freely, so a proper analysis of the Hacker Ethic ought to be of concern both to philosophers interested in meaningful work, and to academics researching hackers and the free software community. I proceed by first developing an understanding of the Hacker Ethic that highlights a central concern of my essay, that of orientations that I characterise as self-indulgent and social placing conflicting obligations upon individuals. Using Marx's conception of alienated as a basis, I go on to show how the Hacker Ethic can to an extent overcome these conflicts by developing a more rounded understanding of the ethic. Finally I raise some concerns for the underdeveloped field of the philosophy of hacking and free software that are particularly pertinent to the paper.	University of Reading
Comino, Stefano, Fabio M. Manenti & Marialaura Parisi	2005 - 07	From Planning to Mature: on the Determinants of Open Source Take Off	full paper (175 KB)	In this paper we use data from SourceForge.net, the largest open source projects repository, to estimate the main determinants of the progress in the development of a stable and mature code of a software. We find that the less restrictive the licensing terms the larger the likelihood of reaching an advanced development status and that this effect is even stronger for newer projects. We also find that projects geared towards system administrators appear to be the more successful ones. The determinants of projects' development stage change with the age of the project in many dimensions, i.e. licensing terms, software audience and contents, thus supporting the common perception of opens source as a very dynamic phenomenon. The data seem to suggest that open source is evolving towards more commercial applications.	Univ. of Trento, Padua & Brescia
Luthiger Stoll, Benno	2005 - 07	Fun and Software Development	link to paper	This study gathered 1330 answers about fun and software development from open source developers as well as 114 answers from programmers working in commercial software projects. The analysis of these data proves that fun plays an important role when software developers decide to get engaged in an open source project. Moreover, the comparison of the answers gives evidence for the hypothesis that programming in an open source project is significantly more fun compared to the same activity under commercial conditions. The reasons for this fact are that open source projects are able to attract software developers with a credible project vision and that they can offer them an optimal challenge.	ETH Zurich
Guadamuz-Gonzalez, Andres	2004 - 08	Viral Contracts or Unenforceable Documents? Contractual Validity of Copyleft Licenses	full paper (225 KB)	This paper asks the question of whether copyleft free software licences constitute valid legal contracts, in particular with regards to the fact that it may create obligations through a distribution chain. There is increasing interest about the non-proprietary licence model expressed in popular documents such as the General Public Licence (GPL), but not enough work has been done in asking perhaps the most important question of all: are these contracts enforceable? Is there really a viral transmission of obligations? To do this the GPL licence will be analysed to try to determine whether or not the terms included are contractually valid.	University of Edinburgh
CL?MENT-FONTAINE, M?lanie, Nicolas JULLIEN & Jean-Michel DALLE	2002 - 12	New economic models, new economy for software	full paper (1.1MB)	This report proposes some presentations and analysis of several FLOSS business models, and a juridical analysis of the use of Free licenses. We propose also a synthetical analysis of the impact of FLOSS on the computer industry.	French National Network for Software Technologies,
Hope, Janet	2005 - 06	Open Source Biotechnology	PhD Dissertation (894 KB)	Building on discussions with public and private sector industry participants, funding agencies, leaders of the free and open source software movement and scholars in a range of disciplines, this PhD thesis assesses the desirability and feasibility of extending open source principles to biotechnology research and development. It argues that "open source biotechnology" is both desirable and broadly feasible, and demonstrates that many of the essential elements of an embryonic open source movement are already present in this field.	Australian National University
Vetter, Greg R	2005 - 04	"Infectious" Open Source Software: Spreading Incentives or Promoting Resistance?	full paper (734 KB)	Some free or open source software infects other software with its licensing terms. Free or open source software is a copyright based licensing system. It typically allows modification and distribution on conditions such as source code availability, royalty-free use and other requirements. Some licenses require distribution of modifications under the same terms. A license is infectious when it has a strong scope for the modifications provision. The scope arises from a broad conception of software derivative works. A strong infectious ambit would apply itself to modified software, and to software intermixed or coupled with non-open-source software. Popular open source software, including the GNU/Linux operating system, uses a license with this feature. This Article assesses the efficacy of broad infectious license terms to determine their incentive effects for open source and proprietary software. The analysis doubts beneficial effects. Rather, on balance, such terms may produce incentives detrimental to interoperability and coexistence between open and proprietary code. As a result, open source licensing should precisely define infectious terms in order to support open source development without countervailing effects and misaligned incentives.	University of Houston Law Center
Vetter, Greg R	2004 - 08	The Collaborative Integrity of Open-Source Software	full paper (634KB)	This Article analyzes legal protection for open-source software by comparing it to the venerable civil law tradition of moral rights. The comparison focuses on the moral right of integrity, with which one may object to mutilations of her work, even after having parted with the copyright and the object that embodies the work. The parallel apparatus in open-source licensing is conditional permission to use a copyrighted work. The conditions include that source code be available and that software use be royalty-free. These conditions facilitate open-source collaborative software development. At the heart of both systems is the right for creators to control the view that a work presents. In the open-source system, this is the Collaborative Integrity of open-source software. The history and legacy of moral rights help us better understand Collaborative Integrity in open-source software. The right of integrity in some international jurisdictions may apply to software, thus raising questions whether it hurts or helps open-source software. Building from these insights, this Article evaluates whether the Collaborative Integrity in open-source software deserves protection as a separate right, just as the right of integrity developed separately from pecuniary copyright in civil law jurisdictions.	University of Hourston Law Center
Imhorst, Christian	2005 - 03	Anarchy and Source Code - What does the Free Software Movement have to do with Anarchism?	full paper (100 KB)	What does the hacker ethic have to do with anarchism? Why does Richard Stallman, an outstanding personality of the free software movement, described himself as an anarchist? We should not imagine the anarchists of the Free Software Movement to be like the cartoon image: A scruffy looking lunatic, with a crazy glint in his eyes and bristling with weapons. Instead of chaos, Stallman postulates a new form of order for the intellectual property in the terms of the hacker ethic - the access to knowledge should be free, decentralized, anti-bureaucratic and anti-authoritarian.	Imhorst.com
Samoladas, Ioannis & Ioannis Stamelos	2003 - 05	Assessing Free/Open Source Software Quality	full paper (325 KB)	According to its proponents, one of the most acclaimed advantages of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) is its superior quality. However, this suggestion is an open issue, since there is little concrete evidence to justify whether F/OSS quality is indeed better or worse than that of proprietary software products. The general perspective of this article is to discuss the current status of F/OSS quality and to assess its performance in various aspects of quality, based on existing literature. Specifically, this article will provide some answers to various questions raised by the assertion concerning the quality of F/OSS. In this regard issues addressed in this article include the quality framework, through which F/OSS quality should be investigated and the performance of F/OSS in various quality factors within this quality framework. Answers to these issues are given by providing evidence from various research papers, empirical studies and reports based on experience about the quality of F/OSS products. The overall results seem to indicate that F/OSS has achieved an acceptable level of quality, although there is more to be done in order to outperform proprietary software.	Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Biscay, Carlos Emilio Biscay	2004 - 01	Open Source en el e-learning: ?Una cuesti?n de mente? - An?lisis del fen?meno del Open source en el e-learning, situaci?n actual y tendencias	full paper (427 KB)	Primeramente vamos a ver ?Qu? es el Open source? ?Cu?les son sus objetivos y sus caracter?sticas fundamentales?. En segundo lugar haremos un recorrido hist?rico de los ?ltimos a?os, identificando los principales desarrollos del Open source y sus tendencias, especialmente en el ?rea de la educaci?n superior. En tercer lugar mostramos el Proyecto Sakai, donde un grupo de Universidades de Primer nivel est?n uniendo fuerzas para integrar y para sincronizar su software educativo en una colecci?n de herramientas de Open source para e-learning. A continuaci?n haremos mencionaremos los principales aplicaciones de OS en general. Seguidamente, he de tratar de poner de relieve los aspectos t?cnicos y psicol?gicos que est?n presentes en el Open Source y sus protagonistas y las razones econ?micas, pol?ticas y culturales que se vinculan o crean un contexto favorable al crecimiento de las soluciones de open source en el mercado y especialmente en mercado del e-learning. Finalmente y como s?ntesis de estas cuestiones describimos el caso concreto de la Universidad de Wisconsin, que actualmente junto a otras instituciones educativas se ha sumado en el proyecto Sakai.	e-ABC
Shah, Sonali	2005 - 01	Open Beyond Software	full paper (130 KB)	The "community-based" model has generated many of the innovations we use on a daily basis. The social structure created by this model has cultivated many entrepreneurial ventures and even seeded new industries and product categories. In this paper, I discuss three elements of this model and present four exemplars of the model that span fields and centuries. I conclude by reframing our view of the innovation process as driven by the activities of firms and research institutions and discussing implications for firms and policy.	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Frost, Jonathon	2005 - 05	Some Economic & Legal Aspects of Open Source Software	Bacheclors Thesis (234 K)	The emergence of open source software as a viable economic model has risen to the forefront in the debate on the future of the information technology industry. However, at first glance, the open source software development model is strikingly enigmatic and counterintuitive. To help better understand this phenomenon, this paper, through market data and economic theory, proceeds to ask and answer three related questions. First, what is the economic relationship between open source software development communities and proprietary software firms? Second, what are the resulting effects on market innovation and innovation incentives? And third, what legal mechanisms allow for the sustainability of open source software and should they be expanded or reduced? This paper concludes that open source activity appears to be generating four economic effects, whose net effect on innovation in the software market is ambiguous.	University of Washington
Iannaci, Federico	2005 - 04	Coordination Processes in Open Source Software Development: The Linux Case Study	full paper (348 KB)	Although open source projects have been subject to extensive study, their coordination processes are still poorly understood. Drawing on organization theory, this paper sets out to remedy this imbalance by showing that large-scale open source projects exhibit three main coordination mechanisms, namely standardization, loose coupling and partisan mutual adjustment. Implications in terms of electronically-mediated communications and networked interdependencies are discussed in the final sections where a new light is cast on the concept of structuring as a by-product of localized adjustments.	London School of Economics
Fleming, Lee & David Waguespack	2005 - 04	Penguins, Camels, and Other Birds of a Feather: Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities	full paper (192 KB)	What types of human and social capital identify the emergence of leaders of open innovation communities? Consistent with the norms of an engineering culture, we find that future leaders must first make strong technical contributions. Beyond technical contributions, they must then integrate their voluntary communities in order to avoid the ever present danger of forking and balkanization. This is enabled by two correlated but distinct social positions: brokerage, and boundary spanning between technological modules. An inherent lack of trust associated with brokerage positions can be overcome through physical interaction or contributions within technological boundaries. Successful leaders are thus the product of strong technical contribution and a structural position that can bind the community together.	HBS, SUNY-Buffalo
Boettiger, Sara & Dan L. Burk	2005 - 04	Open Source Patenting	link to paper (SSRN)	The open source and free software movements have used self-perpetuating copyright licenses to maintain open access to publicly distributed software. This model of licensing has now migrated to the field of biotechnology, where patents rather than copyrights dominate proprietary rights. Consequently, a model for open source patenting or free biotechnology presents a constellation of legal issues not typically found in previous open source licensing. This paper discusses several of these issues, including the nature of the rights transferred, the activities that may trigger the terms of the license, and the legal prohibitions on certain forms of licensing.	UC Berkeley; University of Minnesota
Greenberg, Robert	2003 - 05	Open Source Software Development	Undergrad Thesis (500 KB)	This paper examines applies basic economic theory to Open Source Software Development. Through examination of rational actor behavior I show why economically motivated individuals and firms choose to develop code that to be given away freely. It also examines the various Open Source licenses, including the two most common, the Free Software Foundation?s General Public License (GPL) and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) License. Included are case studies to illustrate the workings of Open Source Software projects and how profit seeking firms have attached themselves to them. These case studies include the Apache Web Server, Mozilla, IBM, Microsoft?s Shared Source Initiative, and Red Hat. The associated business plans are also discussed. An executive summary precedes the paper and a glossary is attached to the end.	University of Michigan/Brandeis University
Lin, Yu wei	2005 - 04	Hybrid Innovation - How Does the Collaboration Between the FLOSS Community and Corporations Happen?	full paper (800 KB)	Unlike innovation based on a strong professional culture involving close collaboration between professionals in academia and/or corporations, the current Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development entails a global knowledge network, which consists of 1) a heterogeneous community of individuals and organisations who do not necessarily have professional backgrounds in computer science but competent skills to understand programming and working in a public domain; 2) corporations. This paper highlights the importance of the hybrid form of developing and implementing software, and also identifies several key factors shaping the collaboration between OSS firms and the community.	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
von Hippel, Eric	2005 - 04	Democratizing Innovation (MIT Press, 2005)	link to Book	Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users--both individuals and firms--often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging user-centered innovation system. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all. The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products--most notably in the free and open-source software movement--but also in physical products. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and systematically seek out innovations developed by users. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.	MIT Sloan School of Management
Klang, Mathias	2005 - 03	Free software and open source: The freedom debate and its consequences (Published in First Monday)	link to paper	To most outsiders the ethics of software is not something usually considered. To most proficient computer users with a passing interest in this question the ethics of software is recognised as one of the fundamental questions in the digital rights area. To most of the latter, terms such as free software, open source, and their derivatives (FLOSS, FOSS, Software Freedom) are interchangeable. Choosing one over the other is a matter of taste rather than politics. However, to most insiders the question is not one of taste. There is a fundamental difference between the two areas even if they share a similar root. Free software is not the same as open source. The two groups differ in their fundamental philosophical approach to software and its importance to society as a whole. This paper examines the two groups? differing philosophies and explores how their actions have affected software development, access to fundamental software infrastructure, and the development of the concept of freedom.	University of Goteborg
Lin, Yuwei	2005 - 03	Gender issues in the FLOSS development	full paper (660 KB)	The FLOSS development is responding to the ICT development in various ways. This essay describes and analyses challenges (societal and organisational) and advantages (e.g. new models for mobile and collaborative work online), particularly regarding gender issues, encountered in the recent FLOSS development. The focus of the essay is not only on the claims made women in the existed FLOSS community about the tensions between male and female developers' interests and ways of doings, but also on the current obstacles against bringing more women, who are not technically competent, to participate in the FLOSS development. This paper concludes with suggestions on how to create rules and resources and the creation of a common FLOSS space for both genders.	Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / University of York
Tuomi, Ilkka	2005 - 04	The Future of Open Source. In: Wynants, M. & J. Cornelis (eds.) How Open is the Future? VUB Brussels University Press, pp. 429-59.	Book Chapter (101 KB)	Open source has seen phenomenal growth in recent years. In many ways, it has been a great success story. Yet it is interesting to study the conditions that would enable the open-source movement to remain viable and thrive also in the future. This chapter explores the driving forces behind the open source model and its constraints, discussing both the factors likely to promote the continuous growth of the open-source movement and those that could lead to its downfall.	Meaning Processing Ltd
Bollow, Norbert	2005 - 03	Webservice Protocol Design for Economic Liberty and Observability	full paper (214 KB)	One big potential benefit of the webservices paradigm is in reducing the costs of inter-firm business transactions. That should allow small and medium-sized enterprises to compete successfully with big firms. This paper considers specifically the economic needs of peer-to-peer business alliances, defined as multiparty business alliances which are not under the control of any single firm or any small group of alliance members, so that each participating firm has full economic liberty. This organisational form is appropriate for example for Free Software businesses. The main conclusions are that achieving economic observability of business transactions is of great importance, and that this is difficult to achieve with the Remote Procedure Calls paradigm of JINI or XML / HTTP / SOAP based webservices. The problem can be overcome by using the SXDF / QQP / QRPC suite of webservice protocols,	Bollow Software Economics Research
St?rmer, Matthias	2005 - 03	Open Source Community Building	Lic Diploma Thesis (1MB)	Building an active and helpful community around an open source project is a complex task for its leaders. Therefore investigations in this work are intended to define the optimum starting position of an open source project and to identify recommendable promoting actions by project leaders to enlarge community size in a healthy way. For this paper eight interviews with committed representatives of successful open source projects have led to over 12 hours of conversation about community building. Analysing the statements of these experienced community members exposed helpful activities that led to the presently prospering communities of their projects. Summarizing the conclusions of this qualitative research a table with conditions for successful open source project initialisation and a subject-level promotion matrix of community building could be created. They include suggestions o?n how to start a new open source project and how to improve and increase the community of an already advanced open source project.	University of Bern
Rossi, Cristina and Andrea Bonaccorsi	2005 - 02	Intrinsic motivations and profit-oriented firms in Open Source software. Do firms practise what they preach?	full paper (191 KB)	A growing body of economic literature is exploring the incentives of the agents involved in the Open Source movement. However, most empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect firms that do business with Open Source software (Open Source firms). This paper contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the incentives of firms that engage in Open Source activities. Data on firms? motivations were collected by a large-scale survey conducted on 146 Italian companies supplying Open Source (OS) solutions and show that intrinsic, community-based incentives do play a role. Nevertheless, these positive attitudes towards the values of the OS community, which are quite surprising by profit-oriented firms, are not in general put into practise. Discrepancy between attitudes and behaviours is a widely investigated phenomenon in social psychology literature. We explore its pattern in our sample, find that it does not concern all the respondents, and single out a group of firms adopting a more consistent behaviour. Our results are in line with the literature on individual motivations in organisations and Open Source business models .	Sant?Anna School, University of Pisa
Dafermos, George	2004 - 12	The critical delusion of the condition of digitisation	full paper (260 KB)	This essay analyses how digital media prosthetics, institutionalisation (in particular the manifestations of copyright and patent law which lurk behind vested interests in controlling the transition to a vastly more powerful new world), and the imperatives of corporate planning have come into a conflict so fierce that shared lived experience, increasingly, is forced to undergo a rapid process of commodification. This struggle, which can no longer be defined through the lens of geography or class alone, in turn, points to a not too distant future in which commons-based peer production/consumption is exploited within the context of intense social taylorism and digital fordism with the ultimate goal to turn culture into a paid-for experience, and hence moving the terrain of struggle away from the surplus value of labour to the legitimacy of knowledge sharing and pervasive networking, and how the latter can be monetised and controlled in accordance with anarcho-capitalist agendas. Obviously, the question which we ought to pose to ourselves is how the revolutionary demands of hacking can be guided, assembled, and reproduced, so that this process of commodification is consciously resisted by technology developers and users alike, artists, and all those whose creativity and desire for socially conscious technological innovation and emergent social co-operation have been enhanced by the digital condition we're increasingly in the centre of.
Behringer, Stefan	2005 - 01	The Provision of a Public Good with a direct Provision Technology and Large Number of Agents	full paper (300 KB)	This paper provides a limit result for the provision of a public good in a mechanism design framework as the number of agents gets large. A canonical example for a public good that is produced with a direct provision technology is Open Source Software.	Universit?t Frankfurt
Michlmayr, Martin	2004 - 07	Managing Volunteer Activity in Free Software Projects	full paper (109 KB)	During the last few years, thousands of volunteers have created a large body of free software. Even though this accomplishment shows that the free software development model works, there are some drawbacks associated with this model. Due to the volunteer nature of most free software projects, it is impossible to fully rely on participants. Volunteers may become busy and neglect their duties. This may lead to a steady decrease of quality as work is not being carried out. The problem of inactive volunteers is intensified by the fact that most free software projects are distributed, which makes it hard to quickly identify volunteers who neglect their duties. This paper shows Debian's approach to inactive volunteers. Insights presented here can be applied to other free software projects in order to implement effective quality assurance strategies.	University of Melbourne
Krishnamurthy, Sandeep	2005 - 01	The Launching of Mozilla Firefox - A Case Study in Community-Led Marketing	full paper (978 KB)	Mozilla Firefox is a Free/Libre/Open Source (FLOSS) browser supported by the Mozilla Foundation. This browser was recently released and has met with considerable success- it has been downloaded more than 20 million times and has already taken considerable market share from its prime competitor- Microsoft?s Internet Explorer. In this paper, I chronicle how the efforts of 63000 volunteers led to a community successfully competing with a powerful corporation. I identify four factors as the key facilitators to Firefox? success- complacent competition, product superiority, presence of marketing leader and volunteer support.	University of Washington
Lerner, Josh & Jean Tirole	2004 - 12	The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source and Beyond	full paper (209 KB)	This paper reviews our understanding of the growing open source movement. We highlight how many aspects of open source software appear initially puzzling to an economist. As we have acknowledge, our ability to answer confidently many of the issues raised here questions is likely to increase as the open source movement itself grows and evolves. At the same time, it is heartening to us how much of open source activities can be understood within existing economic frameworks, despite the presence of claims to the contrary. The labor and industrial organization literatures provide lenses through which the structure of open source projects, the role of contributors, and the movement's ongoing evolution can be viewed.	Harvard Business School, U of Toulouse
Crowston, Kevin & James Howison	2004 - 11	The social structure of Free and Open Source software development	full paper (500 KB)	Metaphors, such as the Cathedral and Bazaar, used to describe the organization of FLOSS projects typically place them in sharp contrast to proprietary development by emphasizing FLOSS?s distinctive social and communications structures. But what do we really know about the communication patterns of FLOSS projects? How generalizable are the projects that have been studied? Is there consistency across FLOSS projects? Questioning the assumption of distinctiveness is important because practitioner-advocates from within the FLOSS community rely on features of social structure to describe and account for some of the advantages of FLOSS production. To address this question, we examined 120 project teams from SourceForge, representing a wide range of FLOSS project types, for their communications centralization as revealed in the interactions in the bug tracking system. We found that FLOSS development teams vary widely in their communications centralization, from projects completely centered on one developer to projects that are highly decentralized and exhibit a distributed pattern of conversation between developers and active users.	Syracuse University
Escher, Tobias	2004 - 08	Political Motives of Developers for Collaboration on GNU/Linux	MA Thesis (1.5 MB)	This paper examines to what degree developers of the collaboratively produced computer operating system GNU/Linux are politically motivated for their contributions. It first states that software is politically relevant. It then goes on to argue for the political significance of Free Software/Open Source Software (FS/OSS) and discusses the developers ambivalent attitude towards a politicisation of FS/OSS. Centrepiece is a survey carried out with 85 GNU/Linux developers that showed that most of them are conscious of the social relevance of FS/OSS and that their engagement is of a deliberately political nature.	University of Leicester & Freie Universit?t Berlin
G?rling, Stefan	2003 - 06	A critical approach to Open Source Software	MS Thesis (358 KB)	The purpose of this masters' thesis was to discuss a number of assumptions regarding the benefits of Open Source software projects. By studying what has been written about Open Source combined with a number of own data collections, this thesis argues that: Brooks law is still valid in Open Source projects; Many Open Source projects are failures; Open Source culture is a product of the 90s, not the 70s Open Source is no guarantee for reduced lock-in effects; Our most famous Open Source projects are not built up by nerds working for free, but professionals, employed by commercial companies to contribute to the projects; Large Open Source projects are often hierarchical and bureaucratic Opening your source does not automatically lead to a large number of contributors; Open Source breeds diversity, not a single winner; Open Source projects often targets the community itself, rather than external actors; Companies benefiting from Open Source are often based on traditional business models rather than revolutionary visions. Open Source is not necessarily an efficient way to develop software.	Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Berry, David M.	2004 - 04	THE CONTESTATION OF CODE: A preliminary investigation into the discourse of the free/libre and open source movements	full paper (155 KB)	This paper uses discourse analysis to examine the free/libre and open source movements. It analyses how they fix elements within the order of discourse of computer code production. It attempts to uncover the key signifiers in their discourses and trace linkages between the sedimented discourses of wider society. Using discourse theory and critical discourse analysis, the theoretical foundations underpinning each of the movements are critically examined and the effect on the wider developer and Internet community is discussed. Additionally, this paper seeks to recommend discursive strategies that could be employed to avoid the threat of colonization by neoliberal discourse and the consequent challenge this has for the ideas of freedom, liberty and community within the developer communities? own discourses.	University of Sussex
Berry, David M.	2004 - 12	Internet Research: Privacy, Ethics and Alienation ? An Open Source Approach	full paper (106 KB)	This paper examines some of the ethical problems involved in undertaking Internet research and draws on historical accounts as well as contemporary studies to offer an analysis of the issues raised. It argues that privacy is a misleading and confusing concept to apply to the Internet, and that the concept of non-alienation is more resourceful in addressing the many ethical issues surrounding Internet research. Using this as a basis, the paper then investigates the Free/Libre and Open Source research model and argues for the principles of ?open source ethics? in researching the online world, which includes a participatory and democratic research method.	University of Sussex
Dalle, J.-M., P. A. David, Rishab A. Ghosh, & W. E. Steinmueller	2004 - 12	Advancing Economic Research on the Free and Open Source Software Mode of Production	full paper (358 KB)	Early contributions to the academic literature on free/libre and open source software (F/LOSS) movements have been directed primarily at identifying the motivations that account for the sustained and often intensive involvement of many people in this non-contractual and unremunerated productive activity. This issue has been particularly prominent in economists' contributions to the literature, and it reflects a view that widespread voluntary participation in the creation of economically valuable goods that is to be distributed without charge constitutes a significant behavioral anomaly. Undoubtedly, the motivations of F/LOSS developers deserve to be studied more intensively, but not because their behaviors are unique, or historically unprecedented. In this essay we argue that other aspects of the "open source" phenomenon are just as intriguing, if not more so, and possibly are also more consequential topics for economic analysis. We describe the re-focusing and re-direction of empirical and theoretical research in an integrated international project (based at Stanford University/SIEPR) that aims at better understanding a set of less widely discussed topics: the modes of organization, governance and performance of F/LOSS development -- viewed as a collective distributed mode of production.. We discuss of the significance of tackling those questions in order to assess the potentialities of the "open source way of working" as a paradigm for a broader class of knowledge and information-goods production, and conclude with proposals for the trajectory of future research along that line.	Stanford University/SIEPR
Dalle, Jean-Michel & Paul A. David	2004 - 11	SimCode: Agent-based Simulation Modelling of Open-Source Software Development Paper to be published in "The Economics of the Internet," N. Curien and E. Brousseau, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., forthcoming in 2005	full paper (127 KB)	We present an original modeling tool, which can be used to study the mechanisms by which free/libre and open source software developers' code-writing efforts are allocated within open source projects. It is first described analytically in a discrete choice framework, and then simulated using agent-based experiments. Contributions are added sequentially to either existing modules, or to create new modules out of existing ones: as a consequence, the global emerging architecture forms a hierarchical tree. Choices among modules reflect expectations of peer-regard, i.e. developers are more attracted a) to generic modules, b) to launching new ones, and c) to contributing their work to currently active development sites in the project. In this context, we are able - particularly by allowing for the attractiveness of "hot spots"-- to replicate the high degree of concentration (measured by Gini coefficients) in the distributions of modules sizes. The latter have been found by empirical studies to be a characteristic typical of the code of large projects, such as the Linux kernel. Introducing further a simple social utility function for evaluating the mophology of "software trees," it turns out that the hypothesized developers' incentive structure that generates high Gini coefficients is not particularly conducive to producing self-organized software code that yields high utility to end-users who want a large and diverse range of applications. Allowing for a simple governance mechanism by the introduction of maintenance rules reveals that "early release" rules can have a positive effect on the social utility rating of the resulting software trees.	University Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Stanford
O'Mahony, Siobhan & Fabrizio Ferraro	2004 - 09	Hacking Alone? The Effects of Online and Offline Participation on Open Source Community Leadership	full paper (83 KB)	Research on computer mediated communication has examined how a lack of social presence affects participation, communication and leadership in online groups, but until recently, has not examined offline relations or emergent social structures. The few studies examining these issues have not been integrated with research on open source communities. Online communities producing open source software face even greater problems of governance than affinity or interest based online communities, as leadership responsibilities extend beyond mailing list management to managing release dates, public relations, and collaborations with firms. With data from one open source community's online and offline networks over three consecutive years, we assess factors affecting voting participation and leadership. We find that the more developers one has met face to face, the more likely one was to vote in a leadership election. Controlling for contributions of code, developers are more likely to hold a top leadership position when they participate more in online discussions. However, online participation in technical discussions did not affect leadership as much as occupying a structurally advantaged position in the community's social network. We conclude with theoretical implications that consider the dynamics of online and offline networks for governing distributed online communities.	Harvard Business School, IESE Business School
Henkel, Joachim	2004 - 09	Patterns of Free Revealing ? Balancing Code Sharing and Protection in Commercial Open Source Development	full paper (107 KB)	Commercial firms increasingly contribute to the development of open source software (OSS). However, a conflict often arises between the requirements of the General Public License to make "derived work" available, and firms? interest to protect their intellectual property embodied in the code. If there are ways to mitigate or solve this conflict, the conditions under which OSS will be an appealing solution to firms become much more general. This paper is the first to provide a quantitative empirical study of this conflict and the ways firms deal with it. I present a study of embedded Linux, based on an online-survey that yielded 268 valid responses. It turns out that firms routinely use various means to protect their developments, while keeping the GPL. Still, they do reveal a considerable share of their code? on average, 49%. Heterogeneity between firms is analyzed using multivariate analysis. I show how the relative importance of various benefits and downsides of revealing determines a firm?s pattern of revealing. An analysis of reported reasons for revealing and of the type of code that is revealed provides further insights into these patterns. Putting the different dimensions of revealing behavior together, I find that consistent patterns of revealing can be identified for different types of firms.	University of Munich
Bosco, Gianluca	2004 - 04	Implicit theories of "good leadership" in the open-source community	MS Thesis (418 KB)	The goal of this paper is to uncover the implicit theories (a.k.a. personal believes) of open-source developers concerning the characteristics and behaviors of a "good project leader". Three main behavioral factors are discovered to describe such implicit theories: competence, task orientation and person consideration. The conclusions of this study have been drawn from an analysis conducted on data gathered through 138 respondents.	Technical University of Denmark
Lin, Yuwei	2004 - 09	Hacking Practices and Software Development: A Social Worlds Analysis of ICT Innovation and the Role of Free/Libre Open Source Software	PhD Thesis (1.8 MB)	Through use of social worlds theory and qualitative research methods, this thesis explores hackers? practices and their relationships with the computing world and the wider society from a socio-technical perspective. Through engaging with a constellation of open source practices (OSPs), actors and actants communicate, negotiate, and shape each other?s identities, practices and understandings of the innovation structure and system in various aspects. In examining the diverse articulations and performances in which hacker culture and hacker identity are both reflected and constructed, the thesis tries to contextualise and deconstruct the ICT architecture we take for granted, as well as the innovations made possible by this architecture.	University of York, UK
Coleman, Biella & Benjamin Mako Hill	2004 - 10	How Free Become Open and Everything Else Under the Sun	full paper (30 KB)	Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been adopted as a political tool by leftist activists. At the same time, it has been embraced by large corporations to extend profits and has been criticized as an integral force in late capitalism. It has been adopted by members of the growing Commons movement as a model for limiting the power of capitalism. This essay attempts to confront the variability of these relationships through a cursory analysis of each field and through an look at FOSS philosophy and practice. It argues that Free Software exists as a politically agnostic field of practice--built on and through a broadly defined philosophy. It analyzes the way that this philosophy is well suited for the spread of FOSS technologies and its translation into the terms of radically different, even oppositional, social and political movements.	Software in the Public Interest, U of Chicago
Ketly, Chris (Editor)	2004 - 10	Papers from Anthropological Quarterly (Vol 77, No 3) - Social Thought and Commentary: Culture's Open Source	full papers (500 KB)	Listing of papers: Christopher M. Kelty | Culture's Open Sources: Software, Copyright, and Cultural Critique --- Gabriella Coleman | The Political Agnosticism of Free and Open Source Software and the Inadvertent Politics of Contrast --- Alex Golub | Copyright and Taboo --- Anita Chan | Coding Free Software, Coding Free States: Free Software Legislation and the Politics of Code in Peru--- Christopher M. Kelty | Punt To Culture--- Rosemary J. Coombe & Andrew Herman | Rhetorical Virtues: Property, Speech, and the Commons on the World-Wide Web--- Glenn Otis Brown | Commentary	Various
MacCormack, Alan, John Rusnak & Carliss Baldwin	2005 - 06	Exploring the Structure of Complex Software Designs: An Empirical Study of Open Source and Proprietary Code (updated)	full paper (630 KB)	This paper reports data from a study that seeks to characterize the differences in design structure between complex software products. In particular, we use Design Structure Matrices (DSMs) to map the dependencies between the elements of a design and define metrics that allow us to compare the structures of different designs. We first use these metrics to compare the architectures of two software products ? the Linux operating system and the Mozilla web browser ? that were developed via contrasting modes of organization: specifically, open source versus proprietary development. We then track the evolution of Mozilla, paying particular attention to a purposeful ?re-design? effort that was undertaken with the intention of making the product more ?modular.? We find significant differences in structure between Linux and the first version of Mozilla, suggesting that Linux had a more modular architecture. We also find that the redesign of Mozilla resulted in an architecture that was significantly more modular than that of its predecessor, and indeed, than that of Linux. Our results, while exploratory, are consistent with a view that different modes of organization are associated with designs that possess different structures. However, we also illustrate that purposeful managerial actions can have a large impact on structure. This latter result is important given recent moves to release proprietary software into the public domain. These moves are likely to fail unless the product possesses an architecture that facilitates participation. Our paper provides evidence that a tightly-coupled design can be adapted to meet this objective.	Harvard University
Bitzer, Jurgen, Wolfram Schrettl & Philipp J.H. Schroder	2004 - 09	Intrinsic Motivation in Open Source Software Development	full paper (279 KB)	This papers sheds light on the puzzling evidence that even though open source software (OSS) is a public good, it is developed for free by highly qualified, young and motivated individuals, and evolves at a rapid pace. We show that once OSS development is understood as the private provision of a public good, these features emerge quite naturally. We adapt a dynamic private-provision-of-public-goods model to reflect key aspects of the OSS phenomenon. In particular, instead of relying on extrinsic motives for programmers (e.g. signaling) the present model is driven by intrinsic motives of OSS programmers, such as user-programmers, play value or homo ludens payoff, and gift culture benefits. Such intrinsic motives feature extensively in the wider OSS literature and contribute new insights to the economic analysis.	Free University Berlin, Aarhus School of Business
Antonacci, Francesca	2004 - 03	Free software development communities as a pedagogic model - Paper in Italian - Abstract in English	abstract (8 KB)	The pedagogic interest arising from the emergence of free software development communities is twofold. Firstly, in their production practices these communities set out formative processes as well as educational ones. These practices characterise these communities and are not accessory, to the point that without them the communities could not survive. Secondly, these communities are interesting as they make up a particularly rich epistemological model for the understanding of formative, educational and didactical themes. Having embraced the hacker culture, these communities promote and create an incentive to the free circulation of knowledge without protectionist barriers. However, freedom of knowledge alone is not enough, both in the educational and productive fields, unless it is introduced in an organisational model promoting the participation and engagement of the individuals. The communities of free software development are a particularly interesting organisational model because their structure, based on co-operation and solidarity and opposing centralisation, promote the participation of programmers and users all over the world. Thanks to this kind of organisation, which owes much to a model of delegating leadership, authoritative but not authoritarian, charismatic but not idealised these communities are putting together a very large number of work groups. These are geographically, methodologically and culturally non-homogeneous groups, which despite all predictions create highly competitive products of high quality.	Universit? Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy
Howison, James & Kevin Crowston	2004 - 05	The perils and pitfalls of mining SourceForge	full paper (60 KB)	SourceForge provides abundant accessible data from Open Source Software development projects, making it an attractive data source for software engineering research. However it is not without theoretical peril and practical pitfalls. In this paper, we outline practical lessons gained from our spidering, parsing and analysis of SourceForge data. SourceForge can be practically difficult: projects are defunct, data from earlier systems has been dumped in and crucial data is hosted outside SourceForge, dirtying the retrieved data. These practical issues play directly into analysis: decisions made in screening projects can reduce the range of variables, skewing data and biasing correlations. SourceForge is theoretically perilous: because it provides easily accessible data items for each project, tempting researchers to fit their theories to these limited data. Worse, few are plausible dependent variables. Studies are thus likely to test the same hypotheses even if they start from different theoretical bases. To avoid these problems, analyses of SourceForge projects should go beyond project level variables and carefully consider which variables are used for screening projects and which for testing hypotheses.	Syracuse University
Crowston, Kevin, Hala Annabi, James Howison & Chengetai Masango	2004 - 05	Towards a Portfolio of FLOSS project Success Measures	full paper (313 KB)	Project success is one of the most widely used dependent variables in information systems research. However, conventional measures of project success are difficult to apply to Free/Libre Open Source Software projects. In this paper, we present an analysis of four measures of success applied to SourceForge projects: number of members of the extended development community, project activity, bug fixing time and number of downloads. We argue that these four measures provide different insights into the collaboration and control mechanisms of the projects.	Syracuse University
Kalwey, Nadine, Stefan Kooths & Markus Langenfurth	2003 - 12	Open Source Software - An Economic Assessment	full paper (636 KB)	This study examines whether or not Open Source Software represents an economically suitable alternative to the proprietary commercial software market in terms of creating value-added and economic efficiency. Whereas no significant differences between both production processes are seen for customized software, the study comes to the conclusion that serious economic problems can occur in the field of packaged software. Starting from a discussion on how licenses like the GPL affect the ability to price software (which is usually below economic production costs), the impact of below cost pricing on the coordination capacity of software markets (customer sovereignty, resource allocation, income distribution, adaptability and innovation) and the sustainability of complementary strategies of Open Source business models (with and without cross subsidization of the non-market OSS-core) are described. Throughout the study, the role of the pricing system within a market economy is stressed considering the specific characteristics of software as an economic good. Aspects other than economic are not taken into account.	University of Muenster (Germany)
Roble, Gregorio , Jes?s M. Gonz?lez-Barahona & Rishab A. Ghosh	2004 - 06	GlueTheos: Automating the Retrieval and Analysis of Data from	full paper (67 KB)	For efficient, large scale data mining of publicly available information about libre (free, open source) software projects, automating the retrieval and analysis processes is a must. A system implementing such automation must have into account the many kinds of repositories with interesting information (each with its own structure and access methods), and the many kinds of analysis which can be applied to the retrieved data. In addition, such a system should be capable of interfacing and reusing as much existing software for both retrieving and analyzing data as possible. As a proof of concept of how that system could be, we started sometime ago to implement the GlueTheos system, featuring a modular,flexible architecture which has been already used in several of our studies of libre software projects. In this paper we show its structure, how it can be used, and how it can be extended.	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Robles, Gregorio, Stefan Koch & Jes?s M. Gonz?lez-Barahona	2004 - 06	Remote analysis and measurement of libre software systems by means of the CVSAnalY tool	full paper (178 KB)	Libre (free, open source) software is one of the paradigmatic cases where heavy use of telematic tools and user-driven software development are key points. This paper proposes a methodology for measuring and analyzing remotely big libre software projects using publicly-available data from their version control repositories. By means of a tool called CVSAnalY that has been implemented following this methodology, measurements and analyses can be made in an automatic and non-intrusive way, providing real-time and historical data about the project and its contributors.	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Robles, Gregorio & Jes?s M. Gonz?lez-Barahona	2004 - 06	Executable source code and non-executable source code	full paper (78 KB)	The concept of source code, understood as the source components used to obtain a binary, ready to execute version of a program, comprises currently more than source code written in a programming language. Specially when we move apart from systems-programming and enter the realm of end-user applications, we find source files with documentation, interface specifications, internationalization and localization modules, multimedia files, etc. All of them are source code in the sense that the developer works directly with them, and the application is built automatically using them as input. This paper discusses the relationship between 'classical' source code (usually written in a programming language) and these other files by analyzing a publicly-available software versioning repository. Aspects that have been studied include the nature of the software repository, the different mixtures of source code found in several software projects stored in it, the specialization of developers to the different tasks, etc.	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
L?pez, Luis, Jes?s M. Gonz?lez-Barahona and Gregorio Robles	2004 - 06	Applying Social Network Analysis to the Information in CVS Repositories	full paper (86KB)	The huge quantities of data available in the CVS repositories of large, long-lived libre (free, open source) software projects, and the many interrelationships among those data offer opportunities for extracting large amounts of valuable information about their structure, evolution and internal processes. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of that information renders it almost unusable without applying methodologies which highlight the relevant information for a given aspect of the project. In this paper, we propose the use of a well known set of methodologies (social network analysis) for characterizing libre software projects, their evolution over time and their internal structure. In addition, we show how we have applied such methodologies to real cases, and extract some preliminary conclusions from that experience.	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Gonz?lez-Barahona, Jes?s M. , Luis L?pez and Gregorio Robles	2004 - 06	Community structure of modules in the Apache project	full paper (444 KB)	The relationships among modules in a software project of a certain size can give us much information about its internal organization and a way to control and monitor development activities and evolution of large libre software projects. In this paper, we show how information available in CVS repositories can be used to study the structure of the modules in a project when they are related by the people working in them, and how techniques taken from the social networks fields can be used to highlight the characteristics of that structure. As a case example, we also show some results of applying this methodology to the Apache project in several points in time. Among other facts, it is shown how the project evolves and is self-structuring, with developer communities of modules corresponding to semantically related families of modules.	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Spinellis, Diomidis, Clemens Szyperski	2004 - 01	How is Open Source affecting software development?	full paper (497 KB)	Paper describes impact of using open source software in general development environments. (From the intro): " The dynamism of open source software development efforts, numerous high-profile success stories, and the novel economic, business, and legal aspects of open source software adoption are justifiably creating a stir in the development community. We software practitioners increasingly face the possibility of using or basing our work on open source components, libraries, frameworks, systems, platforms, and development environments."	Athens University, Microsoft Research
Viegas, Fernanda, Martin Wattenberg & Kushal Dave	2004 - 04	Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations	full paper (546 KB)	The Internet has fostered an unconventional and powerful style of collaboration: wiki web sites, where every visitor has the power to become an editor. In this paper we investigate the dynamics of Wikipedia, a prominent, thriving wiki. We make three contributions. First, we introduce a new exploratory data analysis tool, the history flow visualization, which is effective in revealing patterns within the wiki context and which we believe will be useful in other collaborative situations as well. Second, we discuss several collaboration patterns highlighted by this visualization tool and corroborate them with statistical analysis. Third, we discuss the implications of these patterns for the design and governance of online collaborative social spaces. We focus on the relevance of authorship, the value of community surveillance in ameliorating antisocial behavior, and how authors with competing perspectives negotiate their differences. content of the page.	MIT Media Lab, IBM Research
Stenborg, Markku	2004 - 08	Waiting for F/OSS: Coordinating the Production of Free/Open Source Software	full paper (207 KB)	Trade-off between producing F/OSS module and free-riding is analyzed as game of war of attrition, in which modules developed and potential are heterogeneous. It may be optimal to produce "high-profile" module that creates reputation and signals programming ability. It may be optimal to volunteer strategically for "low-profile" module even if high-profile module is available to speed up development process and reduce costs of waiting. Even if waiting brings opportunity to free ride, there may be rush to develop high-profile module at the opportunity. Model provides explanation for how large-scale F/OSS projects can be coordinated without markets and prices nor hierarchies such as firms.	ETLA (The Research Institute of the Finnish Econom
Chiao, Benjamin Hak-Fung	2004 - 08	An Experimental Study of Open Innovation using MASTERMIND	full paper (297 KB)	This paper presents the first experimental results on open innovation, which is defined to be a method to solve problems with other people by revealing some or the complete history of algorithm already used. An important example is open source. Our data from human subjects show that non-modular payoff structure drives the convergence to a Nash equilibrium, in which commission price to helpers converge to zero but helpers will not stop solving problems for others. By non-modularity, we mean that the total production (or payoff) of a team is zero if either one of its members fails to produce at least at a certain level. In the experiment, subjects produce by solving a variant of a popular board game called MASTERMIND. Theoretically, free-riding leads to zero commission price. This removes a signaling function of price for the difficulty levels of work remaining. Empirically, however, it is not sufficient to cause the catastrophic outcome of zero payoff. This provides a basis for us to hypothesize that open innovation is a key explanation because it allows subjects to directly observe the history of work already done and potentially direct more resources to the more difficult tasks.	University of Michigan
Gruber, Marc & Joachim Henkel	2004 - 07	New ventures based on open innovation - an empirical analysis of start-up firms in embedded Linux	full paper (237 KB)	An important and intriguing aspect of e-entrepreneurship is the formation of new ventures in the domain of open source software (OSS). Previous research on these ventures has primarily looked at the design of business models, yet has neglected other key questions relating to the management of these firms, despite clear indications that some existing insights on venture management cannot be applied to new ventures in OSS. The purpose of this paper is to explore how three key challenges of venture management - the liabilities of newness and smallness of start-ups and market entry barriers - affect new ventures in OSS. Based on empirical data from personal interviews and a large scale survey we find that many of the liabilities that are typically discussed in the entrepreneurship literature are much less of a challenge for new ventures in OSS. Our findings have interesting implications for the emerging theory on e-entrepreneurship, and for entrepreneurs considering to exploit business opportunities in OSS, and more generally business opportunities based on open innovations.	University of Munich
Bertelli, Federico	2004 - 06	Open source software development put in an impure public goods context	Bach. Thesis Abst (98 KB)	The open source software development appears to be a problem of pure public goods contribution, but looking more in depth emerge the classic question posed by Lerner and Tirole: "Why should thousands of top-notch programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good?". So, the aim of this research is to elaborate a model able to cope with the low level of free riding.	University of Ferrara, Italy
Henkel, Joachim & Mark Tins	2004 - 05	Munich/MIT Suvey: Development of Embedded Linux	full paper (97 KB)	The use of Linux in embedded devices has increased enormously in recent years. Most of the publicly available code for embedded Linux is developed and contributed by commercial firms, not by hobbyists. This raises the question if and how the development process differs from that of other OSS. This issue was addressed in a survey of embedded Linux developers yielding 268 valid responses. This paper is a collection of descriptive results from the survey.	University of Munich
West, Joel & Siobh?n O'Mahony	2004 - 09	Contrasting Community Building in Sponsored and Community Founded Open Source Projects	full paper (212 KB)	Prior characterizations of open source projects have been based on the model of a community-founded project. More recently, a second model has emerged, where organizations spinout internally developed code to a public forum. Based on field work on open source projects, we compare the lifecycle differences between these two models. We identify problems unique to spinout projects, particularly in attracting and building an external community. We illustrate these issues with a feasibility analysis of a proposed open source project based on VistA, the primary healthcare information system of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. This example illuminates the complexities of building a community after a code base has been developed and suggests that open source software can be used to transfer technology to the private sector.	San Jose State University, Harvard Business Schoo
Twidale, Michael B & David M. Nichols	2004 - 08	Usability Discussions in Open Source Development	full paper (268 KB)	The public nature of discussion in open source projects provides a valuable resource for understanding the mechanisms of open source software development. In this paper we explore how open source projects address issues of usability. We examine bug reports of several projects to characterise how developers address and resolve issues concerning user interfaces and interaction design. We discuss how bug reporting and discussion systems can be improved to better support bug reporters and open source developers.	University of Illinois, University of Waikato
Matuska, Martin	2003 - 09	Kategorisierung von Open Source Projekten: Aufbau- und Ablauforganisation (in german) - Categorization of Open Source Projects: Operational and Organizational Structure	MS Thesis (1.2 MB)	The number of open source projects is growing. The largest part can be found on large develompent portals. But open source is not open source, each project has unique characteristics. This paper examines operational and organizational characteristics, licencing, communication and documentation specifications of open source projects and explains the trove categorization model introduced by SourceForge.net.	Vienna University of Economics and BA
Lin, Yuwei	2004 - 05	Epistemologically Multiple Actor-Centred System: or EMACS at Work!	full paper (461 KB)	This paper analyses the innovation process of EMACS (short for Editing MACroS) from a socio-technical perspective. I investigates how actors from different backgrounds contribute multiple ways of knowing, understanding and resolving problems that arise in the innovation process. The analysis of EMACS is especially useful since it spans the period that saw the origins of the free software movement and the subsequent development of a broader free/libre open source software (FLOSS) social world.	University of York, UK
Peng, Zheshi	2004 - 05	Linux Adoption by Firms	MS Thesis (570 KB)	The objective of this study is to examine the evolution of the market for Linux based products for the 1993-2003 period. Using data on 317 Linux suppliers available online, the differences in firms? size and in their first products were explored across the adoption stages of the Linux life cycle. Then two temporal patterns of the Linux-market were identified: changes in the entry rate of new Linux suppliers and changes in product diversity. Finally, the attributes of the partnerships formed by four major Linux distributors were examined. The study determined whether the number of partnerships formed by Linux distributors was related to the number of new entrants, whether the motives for partnerships formed by Linux distributors varied over adoption stages, and whether the type of partner selected by Linux distributors was a function of partnership motive. This study builds on the literature on open source software and traditional theories of technology adoption to make three important contributions. First, it develops a method to identify the stages of the life of a new technology. Secondly, it provides a way to measure the temporal patterns of the evolution of a new market. Finally, it validates the densitydependence model using data on open source.	Carleton University, Canada
Suzor, Nic, Brian Fitzgerald & Graham Bassett	2004 - 01	Legal Issues for the Use of Free and Open Source Software in Government	full paper (155 KB)	This paper examines some of the legal issues that face the uptake of free and open source software in government in Australia. This paper was presented at the 'Linux and Open Source in Government' conference, part of Linux.Conf.Au 2004 in Adelaide, Australia.	Queensland U of Tech., Bank of New South Wales
Fitzgerald, Brian & Bassett Graham	2003 - 09	Legal Issues Relating to Free and Open Source Software	Book (1.8 MB)	This is the publication that follows the 'Legal Issues Relating to Free and Open Source Software Conference' that was held in Brisbane, Australia on 3 July 2002. The conference examined legal and business issues facing the development and implementation of free and open source software. The presenters were lawyers, academics and software developers expert in the area drawn from Australia and the USA.	Queensland U of Tech., Bank of New South Wales
Elliott, Margret & Walter Scacchi	2004 - 05	Mobilization of Software Developers: The Free Software Movement	full paper (233 KB)	Free/open source software (F/OSS) development projects are growing at a rapid rate. Globally dispersed virtual communities with large groups of software developers contribute time and effort often without pay. One force behind this phenomenon is the Free Software Movement (FSM), a 20 year-old social movement whose purpose is to promote the use of free software instead of proprietary software. We show how the ideology of the FSM influences software development work practices in F/OSS communities and how an occupational community of F/OSS developers has emerged from this movement. We present results from an empirical study of a F/OSS development community, GNUenterprise (GNUe) whose purpose is to build an Enterprise Resource Planning system. We show how the beliefs in freedom and freedom of choice, and the values of cooperative work and community building are manifested in the GNUe norms of informal self-management, immediate acceptance of fellow contributors, and open disclosure.	University of Irvine
Henkel, Joachim	2004 - 05	The Jukebox Mode of Innovation: a Model of Commercial Open Source Development	full paper (282 KB)	In this paper, I explore the circumstances under which innovation processes without secrecy or intellectual property protection are viable, and where free revealing of innovations is a profit-maximizing strategy. Motivated by an empirical study of embedded Linux, I develop a duopoly model of quality competition. Firms require two complementary technologies as inputs, but differ with respect to the relative importance of these technologies. I find that a regime with compulsory revealing can lead to higher product qualities and higher profits than a proprietary regime. When the decision to reveal is endogenized, equilibria with voluntary revealing arise, again superior to the proprietary outcome.	University of Munich, CEPR
Ciffolilli, Andrea	2004 - 04	The Economics of Open Source Hijacking and Declining Quality of Digital Information Resources: A Case for Copyleft	full paper (277 KB)	The economics of information goods suggest the need of institutional intervention to address the problem of revenue extraction from investments in resources characterized by high fixed costs of production and low marginal costs of reproduction and distribution. Solutions to the appropriation issue, such as copyright, are supposed to guarantee an incentive for innovative activities at the price of few vices marring their rationale. In the case of digital information resources, apart from conventional inefficiencies, copyright shows an extra vice since it might be used perversely as a tool to hijack and privatise collectively provided open source and open content knowledge assemblages. Whilst the impact of hijacking on open source software development may be uncertain or uneven, some risks are clear in the case of open content works. The paper presents some evidence of malicious effects of hijacking in the Internet search market by discussing the case of The Open Directory Project. Furthermore, it calls for a wider use of novel institutional remedies such as copyleft and Creative Commons licensing, built upon the paradigm of copyright customisation.	Universit? Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
Rossi, Maria Alessandra	2004 - 04	Decoding the "Free/Open Source (F/OSS) Puzzle" - a Survey ofTheretical and Empirical Contributions	full paper (308 KB)	F/OSS software has been described by many as a puzzle. In the past five years, it has stimulated the curiosity of scholars in a variety of fields, including economics, law, psychology, anthropology and computer science, so that the number of contributions on the subject has increased exponentially. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of our understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The exercise suggests that what is puzzling about F/OSS is not so much the fact that people freely contribute to a good they make available to all, but rather the complexity of its institutional structure and its ability to organizationally evolve over time.	University of Sienna
Lee, Jen-Fang & Tzu-Ying Chan	2004 - 03	Theory Development for Organizational Platform of User Collaboration Innovation Community	full paper (138 KB)	This study proposes the concept of the ?User Collaboration Innovation Community?, tries to understand this new phenomenon by conducting projects where the opening of source software is the subject of this analysis, borrows the observation variables and propositions adopted by Mintzberg on structures of the innovative organization, and summarizes the opinions of scholars of organizational economics, the relationship between property rights and organization performance. This study further infers a series of conceptual framework and propositions on the relationships among ?organization structure, property right, and organization innovation? for ?the organizational platform of the user collaboration innovation community?. We expect that the construction of this concept framework will function as a concrete description and presentation of the innovation model of the User Collaboration Innovation Community and will serve as a clear path to be followed for continuous research in the future.	National Cheng Chi University, Taiwan
Bonaccorsi, Andrea, Cristina Rossi & Silvia Giannangeli	2003 - 03	Adaptive entry strategies under dominant standards: Hybrid business models in the Open Source software industry	full paper (681 KB)	Although a growing body of literature is analysing Open Source software (OSS) issues, there is still lack of empirical data on the phenomenon and little is known about firms that enter the software industry by producing under the Open Source license scheme (Open Source firms). This paper is a contribution to fill this gap and focuses on the business models of these firms. We find significant heterogeneity among them, in particular many agents supply both proprietary and Open Source software. We present a model of adoption that studies the intra-firm diffusion of the new paradigm. Explanatory hypotheses are discussed analysing how the characteristics of the Open Source production mode and of network externalities in software demand shape the strategies of firms that entered the OSS field.	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies
Blanas, George	2004 - 03	SOS-ware DEVILS[Strategic Open Software DEVelopment ILlnesseS]	full paper (52 KB)	Certain categories of software play a strategic role in contemporary public and private organizations. While software use is accelerated and diffused to more and more people and organisations, software development follows a reverse trend where fewer players form oligopolies, with some of them having almost reached a state of monopoly in certain areas. The evil consequences of such an evolution can be numerous, some of them relate to economic and security dependence and some others to phenomena of knowledge dependence and hysteresis. Within the current paper, we formulate a general framework that categorises the types of illnesses in open strategic software development from a number of viewpoints and the types of damages that could be inflicted to organizations and states as a result of false expectations if these illnesses persist. Finally, we identify the areas where research is considered to be urgently needed.	Technological Education Institute of Larissa
Blanas, George	2004 - 03	SOS-ware [Strategic Open Software] Perspectives	full paper (38 KB)	Certain types of software play a strategic role in the development of the various aspects of organizational life. One of these roles is knowledge development that can act as a facilitator of economic diamonds. We review the characteristics of strategic software and we try to answer the question whether there can exist open software development that would be able to incorporate these characteristics. Based on this review, and on certain case studies, we present a theory, on how open software might be able to close the gaps in knowledge creation and usage - or the reverse, ie. to become a vehicle for an acceleration of this hysteresis.	Technological Education Institute of Larissa
Stewart, Daniel	2004 - 04	Social Forces and Constraint in the Attainment of Community Status	full paper (865 KB)	A study of social forces at work within an online community of free software developers, this paper investigates the manner in which social forces exert pressure that initially shapes and defines an actor's status within the community, but eventually constrain that actor's movement within a status order. The results of empirical analyses at the dyad level show that, in the process of status attainment, community members tend to evaluate a focal actor's reputation according to publicly available social cues. Ironically, these same social cues eventually work to produce stability and constraint in an actor's status position by reducing heterogeneity in community status beliefs.	Washington State University
Stewart, Daniel	2004 - 04	Status Inertia:The Speed Imperative in the Attainment of Community Status - Paper published as Stewart, Daniel. 2005. "Social Status in an Open Source Community", American Sociological Review, 70:5.	full paper (586 KB)	This paper examines the role of tenure in establishing social status within an online community of free software developers. As tenure increases, an actor's status becomes increasingly taken-for-granted, thus making it difficult for actors to generate mobility outside of their current social strata. The results of empirical analyses suggest that the broader community plays a major role in deciding one's social position-a judgment that can be made fairly quickly and decisively. Therefore, members of the community who desire high status should work quickly to establish a positive reputation or else run the risk of being cast into an inert low status social position.	Washington State University
Gehring, Robert A & Bernd Lutterbeck	2004 - 03	Open Source Jarbuch 2004 (in German)	link to book	The "Open Source Jahrbuch 2004" (open source yearbook 2004) is the first publication in German to cover the topic with an interdisciplinary approach. In contains contributions from practitioners as well as from scientists and aims to supply the reader with a comprehensive picture of how rich the open source phenomenon is. Open source means much more than only software. The subtitle of the book, "Zwischen Softwareentwicklung und Gesellschaftsmodell", i.e. "Between Software Development and Social Model", circumscribes the reach of this new way of dealing with information artefacts. The book is directed towards decision-makers from both politics and business as well as to scientists doing reasearch in this field. It delivers first-hand insights as a basis for understanding the potentials and constraints of open source.	Technical University of Berlin
Scherler, Thorsten	2004 - 02	Open Source Software within organization - Critical factors for consulting	full paper (178 KB)	The consultation of enterprises and organizations regarding the correct implementation of modern information technology is an important segment on the modern consulting market. The main focus of this work is to conduct the consultation in consideration of the topic ?Introduction of Open Source e-Business Technologies?. Due to limited budget funds more and more enterprises are designing their value chain more cost-effective by using web based systems. Mostly all parts of the value chain can be supported by e-business technologies. To further reduce the costs this e-business technologies should be Open Source.	Alc?ntara sistemas de informaci?n, S.L.
McLaughlin, David	2001 - 01	Opening The Code: Software Excellence As A Function Of Its Development Environment	MA Thesis (600 KB)	Software is an increasingly important component of the modern world; indeed, software forms the architecture around which today?s digital society is built. Because of the complex interrelationship between computer code, liberty, and the distribution of power in society, the environment in which code is produced makes a tremendous difference in the resulting structure of the world. An "Open" foundation for software development provides a variety of economic and societal benefits, but there are a number of preconditions necessary for its full deployment. One of the primary stumbling blocks is the need for the Open development process to demonstrate its capacity for producing "excellent" software. This thesis tackles that obstacle by first defining excellence in software, and then examining the software ecosystems that surround proprietary and Open Source conceptions of digital property in terms of their incentive structures--incentives that either encourage or discourage quality. Herein, this thesis demonstrates that not only can an Open Source development model produce quality software, but it also takes advantage of the complex adaptive systems model of diversity and adaptation to better meet the established criteria of an "ideal" software development system.	Georgetown University
Chan, Tzu-Ying & Jen-Fang Lee	2004 - 02	A Comparative Study of Online User Communities Involvement In Product Innovation and Development	full paper (150 KB)	The literature lacks a conceptual understanding on how different types of online user communities can influence the product innovation and development. Therefore, this research attempts to understand this phenomenon by re-classifying the current online user communities from the perspective of product innovation and development and has resulted in five different models of user communities. We compare and discuss of the five models. Lastly, we will further discuss the deficiencies of the User Collaboration Innovation Communities, theoretically and practically, to suggest the feasibility of the research direction in the future.	National Cheng Chi University, Taiwan
Prufer, Jens	2004 - 01	Network Formation via Contests: The Production Process of Open Source Software	full paper (230 KB)	Why do both software developers and firms contribute to the production process of Open Source Software (OSS) despite not receiving direct monetary rewards for it? This papers extends results of the economic literature by modelling the OSS production process as an application contest to a "qualified network". The winners receive reputation and high investments. Investors searching for highly talented applicants profit from the selection mechanism of the OSS production process and finance it to receive inside information. We describe incentives for developers and firms and compare the mechanism with alternatives for its efficiency.	J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main
Masum, Hasan	2002 - 07	TOOL: The Open Opinion Layer	link to paper	Shared opinions drive society: what we read, how we vote, and where we shop are all heavily influenced by the choices of others. However, the cost in time and money to systematically share opinions remains high, while the actual performance history of opinion generators is often not tracked. This article explores the development of a distributed open opinion layer, which is given the generic name of TOOL. Similar to the evolution of network protocols as an underlying layer for many computational tasks, we suggest that TOOL has the potential to become a common substrate upon which many scientific, commercial, and social activities will be based.	Carleton University
Dahlander, Linus	2004 - 04	Appropriating the Commons: Firms in Open Source Software	full paper (230 KB)	Firms in open source software (OSS) are active in a field encompassing all the characteristics of a public good, given the non-excludability and non-rivalry nature of OSS. As the case of OSS demonstrates, the fact that many important inputs to the innovative process are public should not be taken to mean that innovators are prevented from capturing private returns. The objective of this paper is to explore how firms appropriate returns from innovations that are created outside the boundaries of firms and in the public domain using the case of OSS. To do so, the paper draws upon an explorative multiple case study of six small firms that attempt to appropriate returns from OSS, with rich empirical evidence from various data sources. The cases illustrate how firms try a variety of approaches to appropriate adequate returns and that selling services seem to be the dominant trend. Firm also balance the relative inefficiency of traditional means of intellectual property right such as patents by putting greater emphasis on first mover advantages and creating network externalities.	Chalmers University of Technology
Hemetsberger, Andrea & Christian Reinhardt	2004 - 02	Sharing and Creating Knowledge in Open-Source Communities The case of KDE	abstract (112 KB)	Our research suggests that knowledge is shared and created in online communities of practice through the establishment of processes and 'technologies' that enable virtual re-experience for the learners at various levels. It demonstrates that online communities of practice overcome the problem of tacit knowledge transformation through the usage of technological tools, task-related features, analogies and usage scenarios. Three questions guided our research. The first one concentrates on how community members organize content with regard to their daily routines that potentially transforms into knowledge for other members. Secondly, as open-source communities depend on attracting and socializing new members, we inquired how new members are enabled to accumulate the knowledge necessary for becoming a valued member. Thirdly, we asked how members co-create and conceptualize new ideas - create new knowledge - in absence of physical proximity. Re-experience is enabled by modular tasks and transactive group memory, rigid guidance of new members, openness and legitimate peripheral participation, asynchronous communication, and virtual experimentation. Empirical evidence is based on an ethnographic investigation of the KDE project community.	University of Innsbruck, Luxmate Controls
Hemetsberger, Andrea	2004 - 02	Understanding consumers' collective action on the Internet - a definition and discussion of relevant concepts for research	full paper (179 KB)	This paper offers a new approach for understanding online collaboration and collective action of 'prosumers'. It is proposed here that theories of collective action and social representations theory, in particular, provide a theoretical framework for studying the structural and social context of online collaboration of consumers, the social actors involved, and how public discourse contributes to shared meaning creation and dissemination in online communities. Processes of naming, classifying, personalizing and institutionalization give their actions ontological reality and contribute to the sustainability of the common effort. An overview and definition of these processes and relevant influencing factors is given and possible indicators of these concepts in open-source communities are highlighted.	University of Innsbruck
Hemetsberger, Andrea	2004 - 02	Fostering cooperation on the Internet: social exchange processes in innovative virtual consumer communities	full paper (233 KB)	Virtual communities of consumers increasingly engage in voluntary collaborative production of digital goods and services which became highly successful in recent years. This paper offers a theoretical conceptualization and empirical evidence of the key elements and processes of exchange in those communities. Within a culture of gift-giving and generalized social exchange, knowledge as the main resource of the community is multiplied by giving it away freely to others and thus, fosters contribution behavior. Friendship, peer reputation and external feed-back provided by a global user community represent highly motivating social rewards which, combined with individual gain of knowledge, constitute a self-sustaining system of exchange.	University of Innsbruck
Hemetsberger, Andrea	2004 - 02	When Consumers Produce on the Internet: The Relationship between Cognitive-affective, Socially-based, and Behavioral Involvement of Prosumers	full paper (223 KB)	This article advances our understanding of the motivational sources for consumer involvement in online joint innovation. The 'free' or 'open-source' software movement is the largest socio-technical network and most visible empirical evidence of this new phenomenon. The paper promotes a behavioral view of involvement and offers a conceptualization and empirical evidence of the relationship between cognitive-affective, socially-based and behavioral involvement in online joint production. An Internet survey with 1486 contributors to open-source software revealed that the extent of behavioral involvement is strongly related to the structure and strength of relationships between different motivations. The relationship between concern for self and concern for others especially distinguishes the level of contribution to online projects.	University of Innsbruck
Baldwin, Carliss & Kim Clark	2004 - 01	The Architecture of Cooperation: How Code Architecture Mitigates Free Riding in the Open Source Development Model	full paper (414 KB)	We argue that the architecture of a codebase is a critical factor that lies at the heart of the open source development process. To support this argument, we define two observable properties of an architecture: (1) its modularity and (2) its option values. Developers can make informed judgments about modularity and option value from early code releases. Their judgments in turn will influence their decisions to work and to contribute their code back to the community. We go on to suggest that the core of the open source development process can be thought of as two linked games played within a codebase architecture. The first game involves the implicit exchange of effort directed at the modules and option values of a codebase; the second is a Prisoners' Dilemma game triggered by the irreducible costs of communicating. The implicit exchange of effort among developers is made possible by the the non-rivalrous nature of the codebase and by the modularity and option values of the codebase's architecture. This exchange creates value for all participants, both workers and free-riders. In contrast, the Prisoners' Dilemma is a problem that must be surmounted if the exchanges are to take place. It can be addressed through a combination of reducing the costs of communication, providing rewards, and encouraging repeated interactions. Finally, the initial design and "opening up" of a codebase can be seen as a rational move by an architect who is seeking to test the environment in hopes of initiating exchanges of effort with other developers.	Harvard Business School
Crowston, Kevin, Annabi, Hala, & Howison, James	2003 - 12	Defining Open Source Software Project Success	full paper (201 KB)	Information systems success is one of the most widely used dependent variables in information systems research. In this paper, we identify a range of measures that can be used to assess the success of open source software (OSS) projects. We identify measures based on a review of the literature, a consideration of the OSS development process and an analysis of the opinions of OSS developers. For each measure, we provide examples of how they might be used in a study of OSS development.	Syracuse University
Bauer, Andreas & Markus Pizka	2003 - 09	The Contribution of Free Software to Software Evolution	full paper (210 KB)	t is remarkable to think that even without any interest in finding suitable methods and concepts that would allow complex software systems to evolve and remain manageable, the ever growing open source movement has silently managed to establish highly successful evolution techniques over the last two decades. These concepts represent best practices that could be applied equally to a number of today?s most crucial problems concerning the evolution of complex commercial software systems. In this paper, the authors state and explain some of these principles from the perspective of experienced open source developers, and give the rationale as to why the highly dynamic free software development process, as a whole, is entangled with constantly growing code bases and changing project sizes, and how it deals with these successfully.	Technische Universit?at M?unchen
Reagle, Joseph	2003 - 12	Socialization in Open Technical Communities	link to paper	While many definitions of openness focus on the character and licenses of the software products, relatively few directly address the character of the social organization that develops those products. This essay offers a definition of openness and considers how that characteristic affects the recruitment and socialization of newcomers to such organizations. The relevance of socialization is clear when one consider the growth of on-line communities, and precariousness of membership in voluntary organizations. I then suggest that "forking," a split of the communities, is integral to the definition of openness and a possible vector of communicating social norms between communities, and that a significant difference between open technical communities and some other open/voluntary communities is the internal orientation of status seeking within the community.	NYU
Dafermos, George	2003 - 12	Blogging the Market	full paper (1.4 MB)	Weblogs have been recently characterised as the "open source media". And in much the same way that open source software is been deployed, marketed and sold within both commercial and non-commercial contexts, weblogs can advance both commercial and non-commercial objectives. However, in this primary - research paper, the focus is on the benefits that organisations can seize by embracing weblogs, and how weblogs are bound to revitalise marketplace and workplace conversations. In addition, several case studies are being analysed, ranging from Slashdot and Openflows to Amazon, Macromedia, Groove Networks, and Gizmodo.
Garzarelli, Giampaolo & Roberto Galoppini	2003 - 11	Capability Coordination in Modular Organization: Voluntary FS/OSS Production and the Case of Debian GNU/Linux	full paper (372 KB)	The paper analyzes voluntary Free Software/Open Source Software (FS/OSS) organization of work. The empirical setting considered is the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. The paper finds that the production process is hierarchical notwithstanding the modular (nearly decomposable) architecture of software and of voluntary FS/OSS organization. But voluntary FS/OSS project organization is not hierarchical for the same reasons suggested by the most familiar theories of economic organization: hierarchy is justified for coordination of continuous change, rather than for the direction of static production. Hierarchy is ultimately the overhead attached to the benefits engendered by modular organization.	Universit? degli Studi di Roma, ACME Solutions
Vad?n Tere	2003 - 04	Intellectual Property, Open Source and Free Software	full paper (17 KB)	The notion of intellectual property is used in order to create digital commodities. While the commodification of code is useful for certain kinds of knowledge intesive work (the Taylorist forms), it severely disrupts other types of knowledge creation. Applying Scott Lash's division of knowledge creation into organisational and disorganisational types, we also gain insight into the different positions towards IP held by different wings of the FOSS community.	Hypermedialab, University of Tampere, Finland
Muffatto, Moreno & Matteo Faldani	2003 - 11	Open Source as a Complex Adaptive System - Published in Emergence 5 (3)	link to published paper	The Open Source community and its activities can be considered to have the characteristics of a system. The Open Source system is distinctive because it is neither controlled by a central authority that defines strategy and organization nor totally chaotic. It can be placed at a middle position between a planned system and a chaotic one. In this sort of position there are non-formal rules which allow the system to produce significant results. The Complex Adaptive System theory can be used to better understand and analyze the Open Source system. This work presents a description of the main characteristics of the functioning of the Open Source community regarding its organizational structure and development process. The concept of complex adaptive system is then introduced and its functioning mechanisms briefly described. Finally, we will interpret the characteristics of the Open Source community in the context of complex adaptive systems theory.	University of Padua, ITALY
McCormick, Chip	2003 - 12	The Big Project That Never Ends': Role and Task Negotiation Within an Emerging Occupational Community	'Dissertation in progress	This dissertation involved in-depth interviews of over fifty open source developers in two major open source projects. The primary areas of interest were 1) conducting an ethnographic study of the work practices and culture of 'post-burecratic' organizations to see what lessons these groups may hold for managing intellectual labor and 2) examining whether the open source movement represents a new professional model for software engineering.	University at Albany, NY
Modica, Salvatore	2003 - 11	Knowledge Transfer in R&D Outsourcing (and Linux-Vs-Windows)	full paper (263 KB)	Why did Microsoft not hire all those smart programmers who ended up developing Linux through the internet? Because, we answer, the value of the information about its operating system that Microsoft should have transferred to any of them to render her productive would have been too high compared to her expected individual contribution, so that after writing a contract with Microsoft the typical developer would have run away to sell the acquired knowledge on the market. On the other hand, knowledge transfer in R&D outsourcing is not always so critical, and for example in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries research contracts are extensively used, usually in the context of a long term relationship between firm and innovator. We analyze this kind of repeated interaction, and find that when the knowledge-transfer problem is not blocking, the firm should transfer to the innovator as much information as it is compatible with the latter's incentive constraints.	Universita' di Palermo, Italy
von Krogh, Georg, Stefan Haelfliger & Sebastian Spaeth	2003 - 11	Collective Action and Communal Resources in Open Source Software Development:The Case of Freenet	full paper (192 KB)	Building on resource mobilization theory, we explore three distinct rewards for individuals to engage in innovative collective action, namely open source software development. The three rewards, which we term communal resources, are reputation, control over technology, and learning opportunities. The collective action (the open source software development project) produces the communal resources in parallel with the actual product (software) and mobilizes programmers to spend time and effort, and contribute their knowledge to the project. Communal resources appear as a byproduct to the production process and represent a public good of second order. We show that they increase in value for individuals along with their involvement in the community. Empirical data from Freenet, an open source software project for peer-to-peer software, illustrates both the levels of involvement and the communal resources.	University of St. Gallen
Shah, Sonali	2003 - 06	Understanding the Nature of Participation & Coordination in Open and Gated Source Software Development Communities	Dissertation chapter (373	This paper explores the motivations of participants from two software development communities and finds that most participants are motivated by either a need to use the software or an enjoyment of programming. The latter group, hobbyists or enthusiasts, are critical to the long-term viability and sustainability of open source software code: they take on tasks that might otherwise go undone, are largely need-neutral as they make decisions, and express a desire to maintain the simplicity, elegance, and modularity of the code. The motives of hobbyist evolve over time; most join the community because they have a need for the software and stay because they enjoy programming in the context of a particular community. Governance and licensing structures affect this evolution.	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champign
Schach, Jin, Yu, Heller & Offutt	2003 - 10	Determining the Distribution of Maintenance Categories: Survey versus Measurement	link	In 1978, Lientz, Swanson, and Tompkins ("LST") published the results of a survey on software maintenance. They found that 17.4% of maintenance effort was categorized as corrective in nature, 18.2% as adaptive, 60.3% as perfective, and 4.1% was categorized as other. We contrast this survey-based result with our empirical results from the analysis of data for the repeated maintenance of a commercial real-time product and two open-source products, the Linux kernel and GCC. For all three products and at both levels of granularity we considered, our observed distributions of maintenance categories were statistically very highly significantly different from LST. In particular, corrective maintenance was always more than twice the LST value.	Vanderbilt Uni.; Macquarie Uni.; George Mason Uni.
Schach, Jin, Wright, Heller & Offutt	2003 - 10	Maintainability of the Linux Kernel	link	We have examined 365 versions of Linux. For every version, we counted the number of instances of common (global) coupling between each of the 17 kernel modules and all the other modules in that version of Linux. We found that the number of instances of common coupling grows exponentially with version number. This result is significant at the 99.99% level, and no additional variables are needed to explain this increase. We conclude that, unless Linux is restructured with a bare minimum of common coupling, the dependencies induced by common coupling will, at some future date, make Linux exceedingly hard to maintain without inducing regression faults.	Vanderbilt Uni.; Macquarie Uni.; George Mason Uni.
Schach, Jin, Wright, Heller & Offutt	2003 - 10	Quality Impacts of Clandestine Common Coupling	link	The number of instances of common coupling between a module M and the other modules can be changed without any explicit change to M; this is termed "clandestine common coupling." This paper presents results from a study of clandestine common coupling in 391 versions of Linux. Specifically, the common coupling between each of 5332 kernel modules and the rest of the product as a whole was measured. In more than half of the new versions, a change in common coupling was observed, even though none of the modules themselves was changed.	Vanderbilt Uni.; Macquarie Uni.; George Mason Uni.
O'Mahony, Siobhan & Fabrizio Ferraro	2003 - 10	Managing the Boundary of an ?Open? Project	full paper (1.5 MB)	In the past ten years, the boundaries between public and open science and commercial research efforts have become more porous. Scholars have thus more critically examined ways in which these two institutional regimes intersect. Large open source software projects have also attracted commercial collaborators and now struggle to develop code in an open public environment that still protects their communal boundaries. This research applies a dynamic social network approach to understand how one community managed software project, Debian, develops a membership process. We examine the project?s face-to-face social network during a five-year period (1997-2001) to see how changes in the social structure affect the evolution of membership mechanisms and the determination of gatekeepers. While the amount and importance of a contributor?s work increases the probability that a contributor will become a gatekeeper, those more central in the social network are more likely to become gatekeepers and influence the membership process. A greater understanding of the mechanisms open projects use to manage their boundaries has critical implications for research and knowledge producing communities operating in pluralistic, open and distributed environments.	Harvard Business School, IESE Business School
Warner, Julian	2002 - 07	Forms of labour in information systems	link	The idea of technology, including information technology, as a human construction is taken as the basis for the themes to be developed. The possibility of constructing an information dynamic, continuous with the dynamic of capitalism, is considered. Differentiations are made between forms of semiotic labour: semantic from syntactic labour and communal from universal labour. Information retrieval systems and the departure from the labour theory of copyright are considered in relation to the forms of labour distinguished. An information dynamic is constructed. The potential and limitations of syntactic labour are considered. The analytic value of the distinctions developed is differentiated from the possible predictive power of the dynamic indicated.	Queen's University, Belfast
Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Cristina Rossi	2003 - 10	Comparing motivations of individual programmers and firms to take part in the Open Source movement. From community to business	full paper (692 KB)	A growing body of economic literature is addressing the incentives of the individuals that take part to the Open Source movement. However, empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect firms that do business with Open Source software (OSS). During 2002, we conducted a large-scale survey on 146 Italian firms supplying Open Source solutions in Italy. In this paper our data on firms? motivations are compared with data collected by the surveys made on individual programmers. We aim at analysing the role played by different classes of motivations (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different groups of agents in Open Source activities.	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy
Barnes, Jonathan	2003 - 07	Open Source Software as an organisational Technology	full paper(171 KB)	This paper is still relatively preliminary, yet it provides a decent introduction to open source, as well as including discussion on various economic issues, contained in the following sections: The benefits of Open Source, Possible incentives that encourage contribution, Barriers to widespread implementation of Open Source.	University of Canterbury
Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon & Pankag Ghemawat	2003 - 09	Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows	full paper (524 KB)	This paper analyzes a dynamic mixed duopoly in which a profit-maximizing competitor interacts with a competitor that prices at zero (or marginal cost), with the cumulation of output affecting their relative positions over time. The modeling effort is motivated by interactions between Linux, an open-source operating system, and Microsofts Windows in the computer server segment, and consequently emphasizes demand-side learning effects that generate dynamic scale economies (or network externalities). Analytical characterizations of the equilibrium under such conditions are offered, and some comparative static and welfare effects are examined.	IESE, Harvard Business School
van Reijswoud, Victor & Corrado Topi	2003 - 09	Alternative Routes in the Digital World: Open Source Software in Africa	full paper (216 KB)	Software allows people to work with computers. Operating Software controls the hardware components and application software provide tools to facilitate and support the users' work. Most of the softwares are owned by private people or companies and users by licenses to use the software. This type of software is called proprietary or closed source software since the user purchases a license for using the product and the actual product (source code). At present Microsoft and Oracle are the biggest producers of this type software in the world. In the two decades a new approach for software development is emerging. Open Source Software movement is built on the premise that better software is produced when everyone is allowed to modify and change the software. So, in stead of selling user licenses, the product (source code) is distributed. The article discusses the differences between Open and Closed Source Software and reasons that organizations in the African context should decide to embrace the Open Source Software initiative. Several emerging initiatives promoting the use of Open Source Software are considered.	Uganda Martyrs Univ. & Univ. Of Huddersfield
Gonz?lez-Barahona, Jes?s M & Gregorio Robles	2003 - 09	Free software engineering: A field to explore	full paper (271 KB)	The challenge of free software is not that of a new competitor who, under the same rules, produces software faster, cheaper and of a better quality. Free software differs from "traditional" software in more fundamental aspects, starting with philosophical reasons and motivations, continuing with new economic and market rules and ending up with a different way of producing software. Software Engineering cannot ignore this phenomenon, and the last five years or so has seen ever more research into all these issues. This article takes a look at the most significant studies in this field and the results they are producing, with a view to providing the reader with a vision of the state of the art and the future prospects of what we have come to call free Software Engineering.	Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Demil, Benoit & Xavier Lecocq	2003 - 09	Neither market or hierarchy or network: The emerging bazaar governance	full paper (192 KB)	Despite the growing body of literature describing the open-source phenomenon, few contributions have been theoretically grounded and research has largely focused on the software industry. Drawing on transaction cost economics, we go beyond these limitations and advance that open source constitutes a new generic governance structure?which we label bazaar governance? based on a specific contract. We characterize this structure in terms of its strengths and weaknesses and in comparison with market, firm and network structures. We consider how bazaar governance is actualized within an industry and the institutional entrepreneur?s crucial role in this process. Finally, we propose that bazaar governance has a profound impact on the structure of the industry in which it is introduced.	Universit? Lille, Inst. d?Admin. des Entreprises
Lakhani, Karim R & Bob Wolf	2003 - 09	Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects	full paper (378 KB)	In this paper we report on the results of a study of the effort and motivations of individuals to contributing to the creation of Free/Open Source software. We surveyed 684 software developers in 287 F/OSS projects, to learn what lies behind the effort put into such projects. Academic theorizing on individual motivations for participating in F/OSS projects has posited that external motivational factors in the form of extrinsic benefits are the main drivers of effort. We find in contrast, that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver. We also find that user need, intellectual stimulation derived from writing code, and improving programming skills are top motivators for project participation.	MIT Sloan and BCG
Stewart, Katherine J & Sanjay Gosain	2005 - 08	The Impact of Ideology on Effectiveness in Open Source Software Development Teams (updated on 08/2005	full paper (728 KB)	The emerging work on understanding open source software has argued for the importance of understanding what leads to effectiveness in OSS development teams and has pointed to the importance of ideology. This paper develops a framework of the OSS ideology (including specific norms, beliefs, and values) and a theoretical model to show how adherence to components of the ideology impact effectiveness in OSS teams. The model is based on the idea that ideology provides clan control, which is important in OSS development settings because OSS teams generally lack formal behavioral and outcome controls. The paper hypothesizes both direct effects of ideology on OSS team effectiveness and indirect effects via influences on affective trust, cognitive trust, and communication quality. Hypotheses are tested using survey and objective data on OSS projects. Four effectiveness measures are used to capture unique aspects of effectiveness in OSS including both the extent to which a team attracts input from the community and the team's success in accomplishing project outcomes. Results support the main thesis that OSS team members' adherence to the tenets of the OSS community ideology enhances OSS team effectiveness. The study uncovers several differences in the importance of OSS norms, beliefs, and values to different kinds of OSS team effectiveness and discusses implications for theory and practice.	University of Maryland, College Park
Gabriel, Richard P & Ron Goldman	2003 - 08	Open Source: Beyond the Fairytales	full paper (244 KB)	Open source is a software development model that to many is synonymous with a free and free-wheeling operating system juggernaut destined to upend current computer markets. IBM is embracing Linux to unify its hardware product line, and Microsoft is screaming that open source is anti-American and destructive of intellectual property. Analysts and executive have been gathering around open source to find out what it?s all about, and people like Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds once indistinguishable from society?s stereotype of the elfin programmers working in the dark on the software that powers the digital age have become heroes, spokesmen, and leaders in the new age of anti-monopolistic software. But is this narrow view adequate? Open source, for corporations, has more to do with a particular business strategy than it does with any specific technology. In fact, technology is just another piece of the puzzle for a successful technology company certainly it?s a necessary piece, but often it?s not the distinguishing piece.	Sun Microsystems
Meyer, Peter	2003 - 08	Episodes of Collective Invention	full paper (183 KB)	The process of developing technology through open discussion has been called collective invention. Open source software projects have this form. This paper documents two earlier episodes of collective invention and proposes a general model based on search theory. One episode was the development of mass production steel in the U.S. (1866-1885), and the second with early personal computers (1975-1985). Technical people openly discussed and shared these developing technologies between firms. Collective invention episodes begin with an invention or a change in legal restrictions. Hobbyists and startup firms experiment with practical methods of production and share their results through a social network whose members gradually form a new industry.	U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Syme, Serena & L. Jean Camp	2002 - 09	The Governance of Code: Open Land vs. UCITA Land	link	Imagine two network societies. In one society, the transfer of information and use of software is governed by the various licenses used to protect open code today. For convenience, we dub this society "Open Land". The other society recently passed a law identical to the new Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act ("UCITA", passed in two U.S. states and pending in several others) to control its information and computer software. We will call this society "UCITA Land". This paper looks at the ways in which Open Land and UCITA Land differ. Although it might initially seem that a licensing framework is trivial in terms of the actual conduct of society, we posit that such frameworks in many ways define the mode of governance of network society. The establishment of a market involves the development of a bundle of rights that both create property and define the rules under which property-based transactions might occur. In Open Land and UCITA Land, fundamentally different approaches to the establishment of those rights lead to vastly different societies.	Harvard University
Camp, Jean L	2003 - 01	Code, Coding and Coded Perspectives	link	Building on computer science I consider code (as opposed to the Web, an instantiation of code) as a new technology of communication. Using the historical and sociological analyses of others, which have examined the results of print on perspectives and society, I offer four scenarios for the results of code. The four scenarios focus on the results of code on quantitative thought: the divergence of scientific perspective with popular reasoning resulting in reduced innovation; a broad-based popular explosion in innovation expanding the basis of reasoning; cypto-anarchy with those empowered by science corrupted with the power; and a loss of certainty of information with a return to tribalism. The last suggests a new era of ignorance, a moment in modern Dark Ages -- in that an excess of the light of information causes blindness as effectively as its absence. The openness of code is a determinant in the resulting social structure.	Harvard University
Aigrain, Philippe	2003 - 08	The Individual and the Collective in Open Information Communities	invited talk (21 KB)	This paper is the written version of an invited talk at the 16th Bled Electronic Conference, Slovenija, June 2003. The text focuses on 2 critical issues for open information communities: how lowering transactions costs linked to becoming an active contributor is an essential factor for their success; and how free (as in freedom) licenses enable new forms of relationships between the individual and the collective. I bring some evidence that this permits to overcome some of the traditional limitations of commons in the physical world. The analysis uses as examples the free Wiki-based encyclopedia Wikipedia and the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nupedia, the Slashdot technical news community (commercial), and Web sites using the SPIP free co-operative publishing software.	Society for Public Information Spaces
V?lim?ki, Mikko	2003 - 01	Dual Licensing in Open Source Software Industry	full paper (82 KB)	This paper analyses how several open source companies use dual licensing: both open source and proprietary licenses for one product. Three case studies based on the experiences of companies Sleepycat Software Inc., MySQL AB, and TrollTech AS illustrate the issue. Especially the legal and economic requirements of dual licensing are identified.	Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
Shaikh, Maha & Tony Cornford	2003 - 05	Version Management Tools: CVS to BK in the Linux Kernel	full paper (233 KB)	Version management tools might be seen as a prerequisite for open source development today as projects become too large to be managed by maintainers alone. Yet the OS process depends on fluid coordination and collaboration, with the underlying qualities of this process based on firm trust and respect for fellow developers. This paper is a study of how debate over version tools reflects governance and decision making in an OS community. The paper is based on a study of the Linux kernel community as it first saw a partial acceptance of the CVS tool, and then later adopted BK. The paper explains the adoption processes in relation to governance concerns, licence issue, and questions of technical performance.	London School of Economics
Long, Anthony	2003 - 05	How Firm Initiation and Control of Projects Affects Open-Source Development	full paper (270 KB)	After witnessing the success of open-source projects such as Linux and Apache, firms have sought to appropriate the open-source development model and integrate it into their own projects. Firms face a dilemma, however, since their initiation and control of open-source projects affects the traditional open-source development model in significant ways. Once a firm takes the role of starting and guiding an open-source project, the open-source development model that attracted the firm is forever altered. This paper examines the effects commercial firms have on the open-source development model when they initiate and control open-source projects.	Harvard University
Bonaccorsi, Andrea, Cristina Rossi & Alessandro Scateni	2003 - 08	An analysis of Open Source production in Italy	report (1 MB)	Final report of a survey on Italian firms that do business with Open Source software	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy
Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Cristina Rossi	2003 - 08	Contributing to the common pool resources in Open Source software. A comparison between individuals and firms	full paper (770 KB)	This paper studies the contributions to Open Source projects of software firms. Our goal is to analyse whether they follow the same regularities that characterize the behaviour of individual programmers. An exhaustive empirical analysis is carried out using data on project membership, project coordination and contribution efforts of 146 Italian firms that do business with Open Source software. We follow a meta-analytic approach comparing our findings with the results of the surveys conducted on Free Software programmers. Moreover, the availability of the data gathered by Hertel et al. (2003) on 141 developers of the Linux kernel will allow direct comparisons between the two sets.	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy
Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Cristina Rossi	2003 - 08	Altruistic individuals, selfish firms? The structure of motivation in Open Source software	full paper (303 KB)	A growing body of economic literature is addressing the incentives of the individuals that take part to the Open Source movement. However, empirical analyses focus on individual developers and neglect firms that do business with Open Source software (OSS). During 2002, we conducted a large-scale survey on 146 Italian firms supplying Open Source solutions in Italy. In this paper our data on firms? motivations are compared with data collected by the surveys made on individual programmers. We aim at analysing the role played by different classes of motivations (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different groups of agents in Open Source	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy
Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Cristina Rossi	2003 - 08	Licensing schemes in the production and distribution of Open Source software. An empirical investigation	full paper (618 KB)	Contrary to what most people assume, Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. A software is considered Open Source if and only if its distribution terms [i.e. the license] comply with the set of criteria defined by the Open Source Definition (OSD). That is, to say that a code is Open Source is to say that it is subject to a member of a particular category of licenses (McGowan, 2000). As many others in the Open Source field, the research on Open Source licenses suffers from lack of empirical data. Although in the literature there are empirical studies that explore the relationships between license choice and project characteristics (Lerner and Tirole, 2002a), at present we are not aware of surveys that collect data on licensors, that is on firms producing and distributing software on an Open Source basis. This study addresses his shortcoming. We examine the license choice of the firms that supply Open Source products and services and relate it to their structural characteristics, business models and attitudes towards the movement and its community. Between September 2002 and March 2003 we conducted a survey on Italian firms that do business with Open Source software. We asked them to indicate the Open Source licenses with which they work, for the distribution of their software as well as the production process. We made reference to the distinction between copyleft and non-copyleft distribution schemes. Using these data, this paper aims at testing several theoretical hypotheses advanced by the literature on Open Source licenses. In order to make the discussion more lively, for each issue we present the hypothesis and our findings in sequence.	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy
Lanzara, Giovan R & Michele Morner	2003 - 07	The Knowledge Ecology of Open-Source Software Projects	full paper (250 KB)	In this paper we characterize the processes of knowledge making in open-source software projects as an ecology of agents, artifacts, rules, resources, activities, practices and interactions. In order to grasp its dynamic features we consider open-source software projects as interactive systems based on dense interactions between humans and technical artifacts within electronic media. Technology, rather than formal or informal organization, embodies most of the conditions for governance in open-source software projects, hence becoming a critical pathway to the understanding of collective task accomplishment, coordination and knowledge making processes. Based on an in-depth analysis of two open-source software projects, we examine three kinds of artifacts, respectively inscribing technical, organizational, and institutional knowledge. Our preliminary findings support the ecological view, that the contradictory requirements of innovation and stability in project-based knowledge making are balanced by mechanisms of variation, selection, and stabilization.	Universit? di Bologna, Katholischen Universit?t Ei
Iannacci, Federico	2003 - 07	The Linux Managing Model	full paper (153 KB)	This study focuses on the distinguishing traits of the Linux managing model. It introduces the concept of process to capture the idea of impermanence, dissolvability and change. Far from being a predictable flow of programming, assembling and releasing activities, it is suggested that the Linux development process displays a stream of activities that keep feeding back into each other, thus creating a complex and unpredictable outcome. The paper further introduces the concept of contingent response patterns to investigate the interaction flows occurring on the Linux mailing lists and subsume patch postings, bug reports and the associated reviewing and debugging activities under its umbrella. The enactment-selection-retention (ESR) model is subsequently brought forward to conceptualize this process as enactment of programming skills subject to selection activities conducted by Torvalds who retains the selected features and feeds them back to the developers? pool to undergo further enactment activities.	London School of Economics
Nichols, David M & Michael Twidale	2003 - 01	Usability and Open Source Software	full paper (105 KB)	Open source communities have successfully developed many pieces of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open-source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability.	University of Waikato, University of Illinois
Nichols, David M, Dana McKay & Michael Twidale	2003 - 06	Participatory Usability: supporting proactive users	full paper (256 KB)	After software has been released the opportunities for users to influence development can often be limited. In this paper we review the research on post-deployment usability and make explicit its connections to open source software development. We describe issues involved in the design of end-user reporting tools with reference to the Safari web browser and a digital library prototype.	University of Waikato, University of Illinois
Jensen, Chris & Walt Scacchi	2003 - 03	Simulating an Automated Approach to Discovery and Modeling of Open Source Software Development Processes	full paper (373 KB)	This paper describes a new approach to process discovery that examines the Internet information spaces of open source software development projects. Such knowledge can then be employed to determine the requirements and design of automated process discovery and modeling mechanisms that can be applied to Web-based open source software development projects.	University of California, Irvine
Elliott, Margret & Walt Scacchi	2003 - 04	Free Software Development: A Case Study of Software Development in a Virtual Organizational Culture	full paper (952 KB)	This study examines how organizational cultural beliefs and values of a free software virtual organization influence software development processes. This study shows how these beliefs and values are manifested in software development methods, artifacts, and tool choice, as well as how dispersed developers cooperate and resolve conflict in a virtual community.	University of California, Irvine
Scacchi , Walt	2003 - 04	Understanding Free/Open Source Software Evolution: Applying, Breaking and Rethinking the Laws of Software Evolution	full paper (1.1 MB)	This study examines whether the evolution of open source software conforms to the laws of software evolution that have been in development for more than 30 years. Given evidence and data that may not conform, it becomes necessary to consider how the laws and theory might be revamped to better account for the data that characterizes both conventional closed source software and F/OSS system evolution.	University of California, Irvine
Scacchi , Walt	2003 - 04	Free/Open Source Software Development Practices in the Computer Game Community	full paper (1.6MB)	This paper provides results from empirical studies that begin to outline some of the processes and practices for how F/OSS systems are developed in different communities. Examples drawn from the world of computer games reveal how processes and practices for the development and propagation of F/OSS technology are intertwined and mutually situated to benefit those motivated to use and contribute to it.	University of California, Irvine
Scacchi , Walt	2002 - 07	Open Acquisition: Combining Open Source Software Development with System Acquisition	full paper (2.1 MB)	This study explores and develops concepts leading to the combination of best practices from open source software development (OSSD) projects with emerging capabilities for virtual system acquisition. Virtual system acquisition is an evolving approach to demonstrate significant improvements in reducing the cost and cycle time for acquiring software-intensive systems, while improving their quality. It employs techniques from electronic government applications together with those from OSSD.	University of California, Irvine
Scacchi , Walt	2002 - 06	Open EC/B: A Case Study in Electronic Commerce and Open Source Software Development	full paper (3.1 MB)	This study investigates how to understand and transform an organizational system for internal or external operations using Open Source E-Commerce or E-Business capabilities. The objective is to identify and characterize the organizational resources and development capabilities that lie at the center of the initiative.	University of California, Irvine
Comino, Stefano & Fabio M. Manenti	2003 - 06	Open Source vs Closed Source Software: Public Policies in the Software Market	full paper (540 KB)	This paper analyses the impact of public policies supporting open source software (OSS). Users can be divided between those who know about the existence of OSS, the informed adopters, and the uninformed ones; the presence of uniformed users yields to market failures that justify government intervention. We study three policies: i) mandatory adoption, when government forces public agencies, schools and universities to adopt OSS, ii) information campaign, when the government informs the uninformed users about the existence and the characteristics of OSS and, iii) subsidisation, when consumers are payed a subsidy when adopting OSS. We show that the second policy enhances welfare, the third is always welfare decreasing while mandatory adoption can be either good or bad for society depending on the number of informed and uninformed adopters.	University of Padua
Tuomi, Ilkka	2003 - 06	Chapter 1- Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet (Oxford University Press)	book chapter (66 KB)	Integrating concepts from multiple theoretical disciplines and detailed analyses of the evolution of Internet-related innovations (including computer networking, the World Wide Web and the Linux open source operating system), this book develops foundations for a new theoretical and practical understanding of innovation. It includes a detailed analysis of the Linux open source development model." The table of contents, references, and other related material is available here	Institute for Prospective Tech. Studies, Spain
Fitzgerald, Brian & Tony Kenny	2003 - 05	Open Source Software can Improve the Health of the Bank Balance - The Beaumont Hospital Experience	full paper (298 KB)	This study describes the implementation of open source software in a large Irish public sector organization, Beaumont Hospital. The findings reveal a radical shift in open source deployment from invisible horizontal infrastructure systems to highly visible vertical applications. The case study describes the implementation of these systems, the difficulties encountered, and also the benefits in terms of astonishing cost savings of ?13m over 5 years. . Given that Beaumont were already receiving academic pricing discounts for many of their original proprietary closed source applications, the savings for a typical commercial organization could be even higher. The study also identifies the primary drivers in the move to OSS, namely principle, pragmatism and practicality. The study also indicates how a typical company can contribute back to the OSS community in their own unique way, by distributing applications form their own domain of expertise, rather than having to make detailed code contributions to the original code base.	University of Limerick, Beaumont Hospital
Narduzzo, Alessandro & Alessandro Rossi	2003 - 05	Modularity in Action: GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software Development Model Unleashed	full paper (297 KB)	Organizational and managerial theories of modularity applied to the design and production of complex artifacts are used to interpret the rise and success of Free/Open Source Software. Strengths and risks of the adoption of a modular approach in software project management are introduced and are related to the achievements of the GNU/Linux project. It is suggested that mindful implementation of the principles of modularity may improve the rate of success of many Free/Open Source software projects. Authors suggest a possible revision towards an improved theory of modularity that may be extended also to settings different from software production.	University of Bologna, University of Trento
te Meerman, Sanne	2003 - 02	Puzzling with a top-down Blueprint and a bottom-up Network: An explorative analysis of the Open Source World using ITIL and Social Network Analysis	MS Thesis (730 KB)	This paper explains some of the necessary tasks that need to be performed for the construction and maintenance of software. These necessary activities are abstracted from ITIL, a best- practice 'blueprint', that is often used by IT companies to structure their processes. Next, using Social Network Analysis, an investigation is conducted to asses how the activities that ITIL describes are performed in the open source 'network'.	University of Groningen
Kim, Eugene Eric	2003 - 04	An Introduction to Open Source Communities	full paper (443 KB)	This report describes what open source communities are and how they work. It cites relevant research and presents original case studies of two open source projects: TouchGraph and SquirrelMail. It then identifies patterns of collaboration shared by these projects, and describes how these patterns might apply to other types of communities. Finally, it reviews what is still not well understood about open source communities, and proposes several paths for further research.	Blue Oxen Associates
Ghosh, Rishab Ayer	2003 - 04	Clustering and Dependencies in Free/Open Source Software Development: Methodology and Tools	full paper (340 KB)	This paper addresses the problem of measurement of non-monetary economic activity, specifically in the area of free/open source software communities. It describes the problems associated with research on these communities in the absence of measurable monetary transactions, and suggests possible alternatives.. A class of techniques using software source code as factual documentation of economic activity is described and a methodology for the extraction, interpretation and analysis of empirical data from software source code is detailed, with the outline of algorithms for identifying collaborative authorship and determining the identity of coherent economic actors in developer communities. Finally, conclusions are drawn from the application of these techniques to a base of software.	University of Maastricht
Dalle, Jean-Michel & Paul A. David	2003 - 02	The Allocation of Software Development Resources in 'Open Source' Production	full paper (362 KB)	The paper develops a stochastic simulation model capable of describing the decentralized, micro-level decisions that allocate programming resources both within and among open source/free software (OS/FS) projects, and which critically shape their growth. The core or behavioral kernel of our simulation tool is based on dynamic "growing" trees, and incorporates the effects of the reputational reward structure of OS/FS communities as characterized by Eric S. Raymond (1998). In this regard, our line of investigation also follows recent approaches associated with studies of academic researchers in ?open science? communities. For the purposes of this first step, we mainly focus on showing the ways in which the specific norms of the reward system and organizational rules can shape emergent properties of projects, and we also point to a validation in this framework of the often adovcated, but yet mainly empirical "release early" rule.	Stanford University
Lee, Samuel, Nina Moisa & Marco Weiss	2003 - 03	Open Source as a Signalling Device - An Economic Analysis	full paper (392 KB)	Open source projects produce goods or standards that do not allow for the appropriation of private returns by those who contribute to these projects. In this paper we analyze why programmers will nevertheless invest their time and effort to code open source software. We argue that the particular way in which open source projects are managed and especially how contributions are attributed to individual agents, allows the best programmers to create a signal that more mediocre programmers cannot achieve. Through setting themselves apart they can turn this signal into monetary rewards that correspond to their superior capabilities. With this incentive they will forgo the immediate rewards they could earn in software companies producing proprietary software by restricting the access to the source code of their product. Whenever institutional arrangements are in place that enable the acquisition of such a signal and the subsequent substitution into monetary rewards, the contribution to open source projects and the resulting public good is a feasible outcome that can be explained by standard economic theory.	J.W.Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main
Rothfuss, Gregor J	2002 - 11	A Framework for Open Source Projects	MS Thesis (1.5 MB)	The historical roots of Open Source are outlined. A comparison between Open Source projects and classical projects highlights strengths and weaknesses of both, and defines their attributes. Existing Open Source theories are evaluated, and the requirements for a framework for Open Source projects are determined. The framework introduces the notions of actors, roles, areas, processes and tools, and depicts their interrelationships in a matrix. Each aspect of the framework is then further developed to serve both as a conceptual foundation for Open Source and a help for organizing and managing Open Source projects.	University of Zurich
Ratto, Matt	2003 - 02	Re-working by the Linux Kernel developers	full paper (497 KB)	Technology design is generally a matter of re-working existing systems rather than the designing of entirely novel artifacts. In this paper I explore part of a computer operating system called Linux that is designed to be re-worked by its users, a process I call 'designing for redesign'. I examine the practices of reworking within this development effort using some concepts gleaned from activity theory, a meta-theoretical model that particularly focuses on the simultaneously material and conceptual aspects of artifacts. This work is two-fold; first to examine design as part of a larger activity of re-working, and second, to begin to put together a model of socio-technical activity that incorporates the complex epistemological and ontological conditions that characterize current human conditions. Understanding the sociality and materiality of "knowing" and "doing" in technologized society means unpacking what we mean when we talk of 'access' and understanding 'use' as often an activity of re-working.	UC - San Diego
Reis, Christian Robottom & Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes	2002 - 02	An Overview of the Software Engineering Process and Tools in the Mozilla Project	full paper (711 KB)	The Mozilla Project is an Open Source Software project which is dedicated to development of the Mozilla Web browser and application framework. Possessing one of the largest and most complex communities of developers among Open Source projects, it presents interesting requirements for a software process and the tools to support it. Over the past four years, process and tools have been refined to a point where they are both stable and effective in serving the project?s needs. This paper describes the software engineering aspect of a large Open Source project. It also covers the software engineering tools used in the Mozilla Project, since theMozilla process and tools are intimately related. These tools include Bugzilla, a Web application designed for bug tracking, bug triage, code review and correction; Tinderbox, an automated build and regression testing system; Bonsai, a tool which performs queries to the CVS code repository; and LXR, a hypertext-based source code browser.	Async Software, University of S?o Paulo
Hertel, Guido, Sven Niedner & Stefanie Herrmann	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: Motivation of Software Developers in Open Source Projects: An Internet-based Survey of Contributors to the Linux Kernel	full paper (255 KB)	The motives of 141 contributors to a large Open Source Software project (the Linux kernel) was explored with an internet-based questionnaire study. Measured factors were both derived from discussions within the Linux community as well as from models from social sciences. Participants? engagement was particularly determined by their identification as a Linux developer, by pragmatic motives to improve own software, and by their tolerance of time investments. Moreover, some of the software development was accomplished by teams. Activities in these teams were particularly determined by participants? evaluation of the team goals as well as by their perceived indispensability and self-efficacy.	University of Kiel
O'Mahony, Siobhan	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: Guarding the Commons: How Community Managed Software Projects Protect Their Work	full paper (366 KB)	Theorists often speculate why open source and free software project contributors give their work away. Although contributors make their work publicly available, they do not forfeit their rights to it. Community managed software projects protect their work by using several legal and normative tactics, which should not be conflated with a disregard for or neglect of intellectual property rights. These tactics allow a project?s intellectual property to be publicly and freely available and yet, governable. Exploration of this seemingly contradictory state may provide new insight into governance models for the management of digital intellectual property.	Harvard Business School
Zeitlyn, David	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: Gift economies in the development of open source software: Anthropological reflections	full paper (145 KB)	Building on Eric Raymond?s work this article discusses the motivation and rewards that lead some software engineers to participate in the open source movement. It is suggested that software engineers in the open source movement may have sub-groupings which parallel kinship groups such as lineages. Within such groups gift giving is not necessarily or directly reciprocated, instead members work according to the ?axiom of kinship amity? ? direct economic calculation is not appropriate within the group. What Bourdieu calls ?symbolic capital? can be used to understand how people work in order to enhance the reputation (of themselves and their group).	University of Kent at Canterbury
West, Joel	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: How Open is Open Enough? Melding Proprietary and Open Source Platform Strategies	full paper (125 KB)	Computer platforms provide an integrated architecture of hardware and software standards as a basis for developing complementary assets. The most successful platforms were owned by proprietary sponsors that controlled platform evolution and appropriated associated rewards. Responding to the Internet and open source systems, three traditional vendors of proprietary platforms experimented with hybrid strategies which attempted to combine the advantages of open source software while retaining control and differentiation. Such hybrid standards strategies reflect the competing imperatives for adoption and appropriability, and suggest the conditions under which such strategies may be preferable to either the purely open or purely proprietary alternatives.	San Jose State University
von Krogh, Georg, Sebastian Spaeth & Karim R. Lakhani	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: Community, Joining, and Specialization in Open Source Software Innovation: A Case Study	full paper (589 KB)	This paper develops an inductive theory of the open source software innovation process by focussing on the creation of Freenet, a project aimed at developing a decentralized and anonymous peer-to-peer electronic file sharing network. We are particularly interested in the strategies and processes by which new people join the existing community of software developers, and how they initially contribute code. Analyzing data from multiple sources on the Freenet software development process, we generate the constructs of "joining script", "specialization", "contribution barriers", and "feature gifts", and propose relationships among these. Implications for theory and research are discussed.	University of St. Gallen, MIT Sloan
Healy, Kieran & Alan Schussman	2003 - 01	The Ecology of Open Source Software Development	full paper (246 KB)	A number of theories have emerged to explain the success of open source software, mainly from economics and law. We analyze a very large sample of OSS projects and find striking patterns in the overall structure of the development community. The distribution of projects on a range of activity measures is spectacularly skewed, with only a relatively tiny number of projects showing evidence of the strong collaborative activity which is supposed to characterize OSS. Our findings are consistent with prior, smaller-scale empirical research. We argue that these findings pose problems for the dominant accounts of OSS. We suggest that the gulf between active and inactive projects may be explained by social-structural features of the community which have received little attention in the existing literature. We suggest some hypotheses that might better predict the observed ecology of projects.	University of Arizona
Hahn, Robert	2002 -12	Government Policy Towards Open Source Software (Edited Book)	link	Can open source software?software that is usually available without charge and that individuals are free to modify?survive against the fierce competition of proprietary software, such as Microsoft Windows? Should the government intervene on its behalf? This book addresses a host of issues raised by the rapid growth of open source software, including government subsidies for research and development, government procurement policy, and patent and copyright policy. Contributors offer diverse perspectives on a phenomenon that has become a lightning rod for controversy in the field of information technology.	AEI-Brookings Joint Center
Nuvolari, Alessandro	2003 - 01	Open Source Software Development: Some Historical Perspectives	full paper (220 KB)	In this paper we suggest that historical studies of technology can help us to account for some, perplexing (at least for traditional economic reasoning) features of open source software development. When looked in historical perspective, open source software seems to be a particular case of what Robert Allen has termed "collective invention". We explore the interpretive value of this historical parallel in detail, comparing open source software with two remarkable episodes of nineteenth century technical advances.	Eindhoven University of Technology
Schmidt, Klaus & Monika Schnitzer	2002 - 11	Public Subsidies for Open Source? Some Economic Policy Issues of the Software Market	full paper (317 KB)	This paper discusses the economic merits of direct or indirect governmental support for open source projects. Software markets differ from standard textbook markets in three important respects that may give rise to market failures: (i) large economies of scale, (ii) crucially important innovations, (iii) significant network effects and switching costs. We analyze the differences between proprietary software and open source software with respect to these market features and ask whether open source as an alternative to proprietary software can mitigate these problems. Then we discuss the implications of various forms of governmental support for open source.	University of Munich
West, Joel & Jason Dedrick	2001 - 06	Open Source Standardization: The Rise of Linux in the Network Era	abstract - contact author	To attract complementary assets, firms that sponsor proprietary de facto compatibility standards must trade off control of the standard against the imperative for adoption. For example, Microsoft and Intel in turn gained pervasive adoption of their technologies by appropriating only a single layer of the standards architecture and encouraging competition in other layers. In reaction to such proprietary strategies, the open source movement relinquished control to maximize adoption. To illustrate this, we examine the rise of the Linux operating system from 1995-2001, particularly the motivations of organizational buyers and suppliers of complementary assets, and Microsoft?s reaction to its success.	UC - Irvine
Maggioni, Mario	2002 - 02	Open Source Software Communities and Industrial Districts: A Useful Comparison?	full paper (255 KB)	Aim of this paper is to add a new and complementary perspective on the existing economic analysis of open-source software by comparing the structure and evolution of open-source software communities and of industrial districts, a peculiar organisational form of production based on a large number of interacting small and medium sized enterprises. The comparison between open-source software communities and industrial districts, in spite of some major differences allows the recognition of the role played by agglomeration economies, an explicit analysis of the incentives structure - governing the private provision of complex public goods-, and an in depth study of the governance structure and evolution of these phenomena. The paper presents some simple simulations which show the dependence of the governance structure's evolution on transaction costs dynamics.	Universit? Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
Osterloh, Margit; Sandra Rota & Bernhard Kuster	2002 - 11	Open Source Software Production: Climbing on the Shoulders of Giants	full paper (58 KB)	Open source software production is a successful new production model in which a public good is voluntarily provided. We argue that by studying this new production model we gain valuable insight for organization theory beyond software production. Under specific conditions this model can be generalized, contingent on the interplay of motivational, situational, and institutional factors. It is argued that a production model building on the shoulders of predecessors and peers depends on a well balanced portfolio of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, low costs for contributors and governance mechanisms that do not crowd out intrinsic motivation.	University of Zurich
Chiao, Benjamin Hak-Fung	2003 - 12	An Economic Theory of Free and Open Source Software: A Tour from Lighthouse to Chinese-Style Socialism (revised version)	full paper (392 KB)	The theory is that free and open source software is private property under the guise of common property. Such software is distributed mostly under the GNU General Public License. The intents in The GNU Manifesto suggest striking similarities between this license and communism. The resulting economic properties, however, are similar to those of Chinese-style socialism: both resulted from an increased separation of legal and economic ownership. The phenomenal growth of China in the last twenty five years and of such software in the past few years could be attributed to such separation.	New York University
Siedlok, Franciszek	2002 - 10	Characteristics and Applicability of Open Source-Based Product Development Model in Other than Software Industries	M.A. Thesis (3.5 MB)	The main objective of this research is to examine the Open Source product development paradigm and its applicability to other than software industries. First part of this paper examines the NPD process, its evolution and main characteristics during years. Than approaches to product development adopted in Open Source projects are presented, with emphasis on the managerial and knowledge related issues, as those are focal to NPD. In the second part Open Source-based Product Development Model is being constructed and its applicability to other than open source software industry verified.	University of Durham Business School
Xu, Xiaopeng	2002 - 11	Development Costs and Open Source Software	full paper (160 KB)	This paper analyzes the effect of the development cost on an open source software enhancement that is developed by individual programmers in an Internet community. It considers a situation in which each programmer's cost of development is common knowledge but his valuation of the enhancement is his private information, with other programmers knowing about only its distribution. Depending on the distribution functions of programmers' valuations of the enhancement, a programmer with a lower development cost may have a less incentive to develop. As the development cost decreases, the enhancement may be less likely to be developed, and some programmers may be worse off.	UC - Berkeley
Lerner, Josh & Jean Tirole	2002 - 11	The Scope of Open Source Licensing	full paper (1.5 MB)	This paper is an initial exploration of the determinants of open source license choice. It first enumerates the various considerations that should figure into the licensor?s choice of contractual terms, in particular highlighting how the decision is shaped not just by the preferences of the licensor itself, but also by that of the community of developers. The paper then presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of license choice using the SourceForge database, a compilation of nearly 40,000 open source projects. Projects geared toward end-users tend to have restrictive licenses, while those oriented toward developers are less likely to do so. Projects that are designed to run on commercial operating systems and those geared towards the Internet are less likely to have restrictive licenses. Finally, projects that are likely to be attractive to consumers such as games are more likely to have restrictive licenses.	Harvard Business School, Institut d'Economie Indus
Van Wendel de Joode, R, JA De Bruijn & MJG Van Eten	2002 - 10	Protecting the Virtual Commons: self-organizing communities and innovative intellectual property rights regimes	full paper (1.1 MB)	This paper discusses the tensions between open source communities and proprietary software development and identifies a number of innovative regimes that should deal with these tensions.	Delft, University of Technology
Aigrain, Philippe	2002 - 10	A Framework for Understanding GPL copylefting vs. non copylefting licenses	full paper (135 KB)	This article provides a framework to discuss the consequences of licensing choices that are applied to publicly funded libre choices. It disucsses these choices from the angle of general public interest and policy. It concludes that one is led to prefer GPL for any libre software component that is publicly funded and when its is providing functionality as part of the common infrastructure of the information society.	European Commission, Information Society DG
Iannacci, Frederico	2002 - 10	The Economics of Open Source Networks	full paper (55 KB)	The open-source movement is becoming an overarching feature of knowledgecreating environments and this research investigates the mechanisms whereby such a model comes into existence. Far from being the result of gifts of anonymous benefactors, the open-source model is the outcome of a conveyance of informative, valuative and incitive signals that larger sets of potential contributors construe in a subjective fashion. This study challenges the gift-economy metaphor and cautions the argument that open-source software is a reliable and generally applicable model for the forthcoming digital age.	London School of Economics
Crowston, Kevin & Barbara Scozzi	2002 - 01	Open Source Software Projects as Virtual Organizations: Competency Rallying for Software Development	abstract only	The contribution of this paper is the identification and testing of factors important for the success of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. We present an analysis of OSS communities as virtual organizations and apply Katzy and Crowston?s (2000) competency rallying (CR) theory to the case of OSS development projects. CR theory suggests that project participants must develop necessary competencies, identify and understand market opportunities, marshal competencies to meet the opportunity and manage a short-term cooperative process. Using data collected from 7477 OSS projects hosted by the SourceForge system (http://sourceforge.net/), we formulate and test a set of specific hypotheses derived from CR theory.	Syracuse University, Politecnico di Bari
Kesan, Jay & Rajiv Shah	2002 - 09	Shaping Code	full paper (1.3 MB)	This article addresses how society shapes code. The term "code," as we use it, consists of the hardware and software components of information technologies. Code is increasingly being sought as a regulatory mechanism in conjunction with or as an alternative to law for addressing societal concerns such as crime, privacy, intellectual property protection, and revitalizing democratic discourse. This article analyzes how various societal institutions, that create code differentially, influence the technical and social characteristics of the code that is developed by them. The article also provides recommendations on how society can intervene and proactively shape the development of code to vindicate societal concerns and preferences.	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Osorio-Urzua, Carlos	2002 - 06	A contribution to the understanding of illegal copying of software: empirical and analytical evidence against conventional wisdom	full paper (96 KB)	The paper analyzes different variables that affect the dynamics among copyrights, illegal copying and software market creation. There is empirical and analytical evidence supporting three major findings. First, proprietary source companies use illegal copying as a source of market creation in the early stages of development of the market. Second, this strategy has positive effects in the software market in the long-term. Third, in presence of an Open Source alternative, proprietary source companies need to use their illegal user base in order to compete better and this strategy becomes optimal.	MIT, Universidad Adolfo Ibanez
Neff, Gina & David Stark	2002 - 09	Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era	full paper (147 KB)	How has the process of technological change in the Internet era influenced the way we organize economic activities? In this paper we discuss how information technologies foster the emergent design and user-driven design of websites and other online media, as well as products and organizations offline. A cycle of testing, feedback, and innovation facilitates ongoing negotiations around making products and around organizing that production. We call the organizational state of flux that emerges from these negotiations Permanently Beta. Beta testing, open source software, and interactive communities manifest aspects of permanently beta organization.	Columbia University
Hawkins, Richard	2003 - 02	The Economics of Free Software for a Competitive Firm	full paper (176 KB)	This paper builds a simple economic model of the profit seeking firm with a choice between producing an open source and proprietary solutions. Differences between public and viral licenses are discussed from the firm's perpective. Advocacy issues are omitted entirely, and the model requires no math beyond subtraction. The decision of a firm to adopt an open source product rather than purchase is also discussed, but is seen as a trivial and uninteresting problem.	Penn. State University
Tzouris, Menelaos	2002 - 09	Software Freedom, Open Software and the Participant's Motivation - A Multidisciplinary Study	M.Sc. Thesis (786 KB)	The success of Free/Open Source Software has demonstrated the viability and often the dominance of an alternative ? almost paradoxical ? form of software development. This innovative organisational formation and operation has, recently, been studied intensively. The current paper deals with the issue of participant?s motivation to join and then to operate in a free/open source software development process. However, it does not adopt a single perspective towards reaching a definite answer. On the contrary, building on accumulative research work, it argues that no single perspective is adequate to explain free/open source software participants? motivation, since each perspective provides a rather limited understanding of the issue.	London School of Economics and Political Science
Gonz?lez-Barahona, Jes?s M., Miguel A. Ortu?o P?rez, Pedro de las Heras Quir?s, Jos? Centeno Gonz?lez & Vicente Matell?n Olivera	2002 - 03	Counting potatoes: The size of Debian 2.2	full paper (HTML)	Debian is possibly the largest free software distribution, with well over 2,800 source packages in the latest stable release (Debian 2.2) and more than 4,000 source packages in the release currently in preparation. But, how large is "the largest"? We show that Debian 2.2 includes more than 55,000,000 physical SLOC (almost twice than Red Hat 7.1, released about 8 months later), showing that the Debian development model (based on the work of a large group of voluntary developers spread around the world) is at least as capable as other development methods (like the more centralized one) to manage distributions of this size. It is also shown that if Debian had been developed using traditional proprietary methods, that its cost would be close to $1.9 billion. In addition, we offer both an analysis of the programming languages used in the distribution.	Debian
Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Cristina Rossi	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: Why open source software can succeed	full paper (118K)	The paper discusses three key economic problems raised by the emergence and diffusion of open source software: motivation, coordination, and diffusion under a dominant standard. First the movement took off through the activity of a software development community that deliberately did not follow profit motivations. Second, a hierarchical coordination emerged without the support of an organization with proprietary rights. Third, Linux and other open source systems diffused in an evnvironment dominated by established proprietary standards, which benefited from significant increasing returns. The paper show that recent developments in the theory of critical mass in the diffusion of technologies with network externality may help to explain these phenomena.	Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy
Reddy, Bernard & David S. Evans	2002 - 04	Government Preferences for Promoting Open-Source Software: A Solution in Search of a Problem	link to full paper	Governments around the world are making or considering efforts to promote open-source software at he expense of proprietary software. This article examines the economic basis for these kinds of government interventions in the market. The article discusses the industrial organization and performance of the proprietary software business and describes how the open-source movement produces and distributes software. It then surveys current government proposals and initiatives to support open-source software and examines whether there is a significant market failure that would justify such intervention in the software industry. The article concludes that there is no evidence of any significant market failures in the provision of commercial software and no evidence that the establishment of policy preferences in favor of open-source software on the part of governments would increase consumer welfare.	NERA Economic Consulitng
Lecocq, Xavier & Benoit Demil	2002 - 07	Open standard: role of externalities and impact on the industry structure	full paper (138 KB)	Conceding a part of property rights appears counter-intuitive in regards to the Porterian and Resources-Based frameworks. However industrial economics literature and recent examples suggest that this strategy is fruitful to develop network externalities and consequently to impose a standard in network industries. This article explores the role of the sponsor and the impacts of an open property rights strategy on the industry structure. Drawing on the empirical data collected from the U.S. Roleplaying Game industry, our results reveal that: 1) the open approach promoted by a sponsor does not work effectively without network industries specific resources; 2) this strategy induces new entries that benefits to the sponsor; 3) the firms in the industry do not change their technological trajectories except those which are well endowed with resources.	IAE de Lille
O'Mahony, Siobhan	2002 - 06	The Emergence of a new commercial actor: community managed software projects (Please contact the author for the dissertation)	PhD Thesis (500KB)	Institutional theory has matured to the point where we know a great deal about how institutions, once formed, are reproduced. We know less about how they are constructed. This study examines how social movements might inspire the creation of new organizing mechanisms. If new organizational forms result from recombination of existing elements, how might challenging and defending groups affect their construction? An inductive, ethnographic approach was used to examine interactions between community managed software projects from the free software and open source social movements (challengers) and established firms in the software industry (defenders). With interviews of seventy contributors and close examination of the practices used by four projects to manage their interactions with firms., I find that both community projects and firms made changes in their practices and form to better collaborate.	Stanford University/Harvard Business School
von Hippel, Eric & Georg von Krogh	2002 - 04	Exploring the Open Source Software Phenomenon: Issues for Organization Science	full paper (152 KB)	Currently two models of innovation are prevalent in organization science. The "private investment" model assumes returns to the innovator results from private goods and efficient regimes of intellectual property protection. The "collective action" model assumes that under conditions of market failure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. In this paper we propose that open source software development is an exemplar of a compound model of innovation that contains elements of both the private investment and the collective action models. We describe a new set of research questions this model raises for scholars in organization science.	MIT, University of St. Gallen
Nichols, David M, Kirsten Thomson & Stuart A. Yeates	2002 - 06	Usability and open-source software development	full paper (40 KB)	This paper reports a usability study of the open-source Greenstone Digital Library collection-building software. The problems highlighted by the study are analysed to identify their likely source within the social context of Greenstone's development environment. We discuss how characteristics of open-source software development influence the usability of resulting software products.	University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Mateos Garcia, Juan	2001 - 08	Innovating without Money: Linux and the Open Source Paradigm as an Alternative to Commercial Software Development	full paper (402 KB)	This dissertation analyses two different paradigms used for the development of a operating systems by Microsoft Corporation and the Linux Community. Through the observation of the strategies and methodologies used by these actors in their work, and taking into account the constraints to which they are subject, assesses, from a dynamic perspective, the relative strengths and weaknesses of their competing paradigms. A theoretical model based on Giovanni Dosi?s "Technological Paradigms" framework, incorporating institutional, industrial, social and cultural aspects, is constructed and specifically adapted to the software industry case. The private management of technology issues considered during the analysis of the development processes inside different organisations are linked to questions having to do with the evolution of high technology, networked, markets.	University of Sussex
Franck, Egon & Carola Jungwirth	2002 - 06	Reconciling investors and donators - The governance structure of open source	full paper (246 KB)	The authors argue that the basic institutional innovation in open source has been the crafting of a governance structure, which enables investment without crowding out donations. The focus of the presented analysis lies on the specific institutional mechanisms, by which the open source governance structure achieves to reconcile the interests of investors and donators.	University of Zurich
von Hippel, Eric	2002 - 06	Horizontal innovation networks- by and for users	full paper (371 KB)	Innovation development, production, distribution and consumption networks can be built up horizontally with actors consisting only of innovation users. User innovation networks can function entirely independently of manufacturers when (1) at least some users have sufficient incentive to innovate, (2) at least some users have an incentive to voluntarily reveal their innovations, and (3) diffusion of innovations by users is low cost and can compete with commercial production and distribution. In this paper we explore the empirical evidence related to each of these matters and conclude that conditions favorable to user innovation networks are often present in the economy.	MIT
Madanmohan, T.R. & Siddhesh Navelkar	2002 - 06	Roles and Knowledge Management in Online Technology Communities: An Ethnography Study	full paper (96 KB)	Technical communities are groups who share a common interest in a technology. The literature on technology communities lacks a conceptual understanding of the roles of various players in the online community. An understanding of the different roles the members of the community and the impact of the roles on knowledge management is crucial to manage and sustain such online technical communities. This study based on an ethnographic analysis of two technical communities identifies seven distinct roles. The impact of each of the role on knowledge management activities is discussed.	Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, Digital
Pedersen, Soren Thing	2002 - 06	Open Source and the Network Society	full paper (232 KB)	This paper discusses how the open source movement can be regarded as a civil society. Through an analysis and discussion of the recent development in society the context and to a certain extent the prerequisites surrounding the open source movement will be presented. The analysis and discussion of the open source movement will both derive advantage from this basis as well as throw new light back on the recent development in society.	University of Aarhus, Denmark
Orlikowski, Wanda	2002 - 05	Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing>	full paper (134 KB)	The author outlines a perspective on knowing in practice which highlights the essential role of human action in knowing how to get things done in complex organizational work. The perspective suggests that knowing is not a static, embedded capability or stable disposition of actors, but rather an ongoing social accomplishment, constituted and reconstituted as actors engage the world in practice. In interpreting the findings of an empirical study conducted in a geographically-dispersed high-tech organization, the author suggests that the competence to do global product development is both collective and distributed, grounded in the everyday practices of organizational members.	MIT
Krishnamurthy, Sandeep	2002 - 05	Cave or Community? An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects	full paper (96 KB)	The author conducts an empirical study of the top 100 mature projects on SourceForge.net to develop an understanding of the F/OSS community. The author sought empirical evidence that would help us understand which is more common- the cave (i.e., lone producer) or the community in F/OSS development. Some key findings include: first, most F/OSS programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. Second, most OSS programs do not generate a lot of discussion. Third, products with more developers tend to be viewed and downloaded more often. Fourth, the number of developers associated with a project is unrelated to the age of the project.	University of Washington
Morgan, Jason V.	2002 - 05	Open Source Software and Software Patents: Finding the Common Ground in a Patent Pool	B.Sc. Thesis (229 KB)	Software patents threaten the future of the OSS community, especially with the increased importance of software standards and the change in attitude in the organizations forming these standards. The OSS community does not exercise much influence over the policymakers who have legitimized software patents because of differences between the two groups' motivations. There are many possible actions the OSS community could take, but an OSS patent pool is the best way for the OSS community to leverage both the patent system and the OSS culture to help protect the future of OSS.	University of Utah School of Computing
Pal, Nilendu & T.R. Madanmohan	2002 - 01	Competing on Open Source: Strategies and Practise	full paper (200 K)	This paper seeks to address the following issues: How do firms compete with open source? What resources become critical in managing their growth? What strategies do they adopt to co-exist with dominant proprietary software firms? How do they interface with communities of practice to exploit network externalities? What strategies do they adopt to lock-in developers? Based on a multiple case analysis the authors seek to draw initial conclusions about the key strategic aspects that underlie the open source initiatives. Finally they describe how for-profit firms can establish and sustain open source practice.	Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore
Butler, Brian, Lee Sproull, Sara Kiesler & Robert Kraut	2002 - 02	Community Effort in Online Groups? Who Does the Work and Why?	full paper (122 K)	In this paper, the authors consider how the formal leadership role, personal and community benefits, and community characteristics influence the effort members put into helping their online groups. Results from a survey of Internet listserv owners and other members suggest that though owners, who have a formal leadership role, do more of the effortful community building work than do regular members, other members also take on some of the work. Moreover, members who value different benefits are likely to contribute to the development on an online community in different ways.	University of Pittsburg, New York University, CMU
Franke, Nik and Eric von Hippel	2003 - 02	RP Special Issue: Satisfying Heterogeneous User Needs via Innovation Toolkits: The Case of Apache Security Software	full paper (147 KB)	Manufacturers customarily provide only a few product variants to address the average needs of users in the major segments of markets they serve. When user needs are highly heterogeneous, this approach leaves many seriously dissatisfied. One solution is to enable users to modify products on their own using ?innovation toolkits.? We explore the effectiveness of this solution in an empirical study of Apache security software. We find high heterogeneity of need in that field, and also find that users modifying their own software to be significantly more satisfied than non-innovating users. We propose that the user toolkits solution will be useful in many markets characterized by heterogeneous demand.d.onality on offer. We also find that users creating their own software modifications are significantly more satisfied than are non-innovating users. We conclude by suggesting that the "toolkits for user innovation" approach to enhancing user satisfaction might be generally applicable to markets characterized by heterogeneous user needs.	Vienna University, MIT
Scacchi, Walt	2001 - 12	Understanding the Requirements for Developing Open Source Software Systems	full paper (646 KB)	This study presents findings from an empirical study of socio-technical processes and practices that give rise to open software. Four open software development communities are examined. Eight kinds of software informalisms are found to play a critical role in the requirements for developing open software systems. Subsequently, understanding the roles these software informalisms take in developing the requirements for open source software is the focus of this study.	UC Irvine
Aigrain, Philippe	2001 - 07	Positive Intellectual Rights and Information Exchanges	full paper (48 KB)	This paper proposes a reversal in how to consider the rights associated with information, media contents, software and other intellectual entities. The proposed approach sets as its basis a number of positive intellectual rights, defined as to enable wide societal production and exchange of intellectual entities. It then defines how granting of specific attributes of property is necessary as to ensure that the positive rights are not abused to the detriment of some basic values, and are implemented in reality. Such a reversal allows to exploit the benefits of information and communication technology. More generally, it debates right issues for the technology of the intangible.	European Commission, Information Society DG
Zhang, Wei & John Storck	2001 - 00	Peripheral Members in Online Communities	full paper (61 KB)	Organizations are exploring the role communities play in knowledge management and online communities are attracting more and more attentions. One difference between online communities and conventional communities lies in the large number of peripheral members in online communities, which is the focus of the study. The study empirically verifies the important role peripheral members play in online communities. It also suggests that in addition to benefiting from online communities, peripheral members also contribute to online communities.	Boston University
Garzarelli, Giampaolo	2002 - 06	Open Source Software and the Economics of Organization	full paper (340 KB)	Open source software development has organizational characteristics that are out of the ordinary. The study suggests that this organization of work can be explained by combining the organizational theory of professions with the one of clubs. The claim is in fact that these organizations are at least as good as firms in sharing rich types of information in real time because (a) constituents have symmetry of absorptive capacity, and (b) software itself is a capital structure embodying knowledge.	Universit? degli Studi di Roma
Neus, Andreas	2001 - 11	Managing Information Quality in Virtual Communities of Practice	full paper (174 KB)	In this paper we review how the new economics of information enable a new paradigm of collaboration. Spearheaded by the Open Source community, this evolutionary approach to collaborative content creation is a way to address information quality in virtual communities of practice. Based on experience gained in community projects, a few simple steps toward improving the quality of information in virtual communities are presented and illustrated.	IBM Unternehmensberatung GmbH
Lancahire, David	2001 - 12	Code, Culture and Cash: The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development	full paper (link)	The nexus of open source development appears to have shifted to Europe over the last ten years. This paper explains why this trend undermines cultural arguments about "hacker ethics" and "post-scarcity" gift economies. It suggests that classical economic theory offers a more succinct explanation for the peculiar international distribution of open source development: hacking rises and falls inversely to its opportunity cost. This finding throws doubt on the Schumpeterian assumption that the efficiency of industrial systems can be measured without reference to the social institutions that bind them.	UC Berkeley
Kelty, Chris	2001 - 12	Free Software/Free Science	full paper (link)	This paper explores the comparison often made between Free Software and scientific research, and the tendency to discuss both endeavors by positing a role for reputation as the currency of value. It discusses a handful of examples from the history and social study of science to explain how scholars have approached similar issues in understanding scientific activity. It also offers some speculations on the relationship between the metaphorical currency of reputation and real money, and that between metaphorical and actual intellectual property.	Rice University
Jordan, John	2001 - 05	Detecting Dominant Design	M. A.Sc. Thesis (987 KB)	This paper derives a framework for the emergence of a dominant design in the web server market. Particular attention is given to factors important in network-based economies including network effects, standards, complimentary assets and technological change. A complete examination of the web server industry from its origins in the Internet through to today's market dominated by the products of open-source and proprietary software provides interesting insights into the application of the emergence framework.	University of Waterloo (Alcatel)
Wendel de Joode, Ruben van & Jeroen Kemp	2001 - 09	The Strategy Finding Task Within Collaborative Networks, Based on an Exemplary Case of the Linux Community	abstract (28 KB)	This article will focus on how the strategy-finding task is performed within virtual organisations in general and in the open source community of Linux in particular. This article will demonstrate that one of the reasons for the success of Linux is the way the strategic finding task is fulfilled in this community.The point to be shown in this paper is the self-organising power and apparent success of emergent ('bottom up') strategy finding processes within the Linux community, ensuring the interaction between change trajectories of both its internal resources and external threats and weaknesses. It will be shown that a number of mechanisms have institutionalised this interaction in the community.	Delft-University of Technology, Fraunhofer IAO
Mockus, Audris & Roy T. Fielding & James Herbsleb	2000 - 06	A Case Study of Open Source Software Development: The Apache Server	full paper ((253 KB)	According to its proponents, open source style software development has the capacity to compete successfully, and perhaps in many cases displace, traditional commercial development methods.We examine the development process of a major open source application, the Apache web server. By using email archives of source code change history and problem reports we quantify aspects of developer participation, core team size, code ownership, productivity, defect density, and problem resolution interval for this OSS project. This analysis reveals a unique process, which performs well on important measures.	Bell Labs, UC Irvivne, Bell Labs
Kogut, Bruce & Anca Metiu	2001 - 02	Distributed Knowledge and the Global Organization of Software Development	full paper (94 KB)	Open-source software development is a production model that exploits the distributed intelligence of participants in Internet communities. This model is efficient because of two related reasons: it avoids the inefficiencies of a strong intellectual property regime and it implements concurrently design and testing of software modules. The hazard of open source is that projects can ?fork? into competing versions. However, open-source communities consist of governance structures that constitutionally minimize this danger. Because open source works in a distributed environment, it presents an opportunity for developing coun-tries to participate in frontier innovation.	Wharton, INSEAD
Garud, Raghu & Arun Kumaraswamy	1993 -00	Changing Competitive Dynamics in Network Industries: An Exploration of SUN Microsystems' Open Systems Strategy	abstract (26 KB)	An integral part of competition is to deny rivals access to proprietary technical knowledge. Yet, SUN Microsystems provides rivals with easy access to its technical knowledge and encourages them to enter its workstation market. This paper employs theoretical insights on technological systems and network externalities to understand SUN's open systems strategy. The paper also explores the changing nature of competition in network industries.	NYU, Rutgers
Garud, Raghu, Sanjay Jain & Arun Kumaraswamy	2002 - 01	Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Sponsorship of Common Technological Standards: The Case of SUN Microsystems and Java	full paper (398 KB)	Institutional entrepreneurship implicit in a firm's sponsorship of its technology as a common standard is beset by several challenges. These challenges arise from a standard's property to enable and constrain even as potential competitors agree to cooperate on its creation. Our exploration of Sun Microsystems's sponsorship of its Java technology suggests that standards-in-the-making generate seeds of self-destruction. Our study also identifies the social and political skills that a sponsor deploys to address these challenges.	NYU, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rutgers
Dalle, Jean-Michael and Jullien, Nicolas	2002 - 01	Open-Source vs. Proprietary Software	full paper (92 KB)	The article studies technological competition between open-source and proprietary software using a model from interaction theory. We argue that the organizational structure of open-source software, allowed by openness of source codes and by the subsequent development of dedicated communities, is a key feature which, together with compatibility, can allow open-source software to overcome existing proprietary standards.	ENS-Cachan & ENST-Bretagne
Dafermos, George	2001 - 09	Management and Virtual Decentralized Networks: The Linux Project	M. A. Thesis	This paper examines whether geographically dispersed knowledge workers can virtually collaborate for a project under no central planning. Co-ordination, management and the role of knowledge arise as the central areas of focus. The Linux Project and its development model are selected as a case of analysis and the critical success factors of this organizational design are identified. The study proceeds to the formulation of a framework that can be applied to all kinds of virtual decentralized work and concludes that value creation is maximized when there is intense interaction and uninhibited sharing of information between the organization and the surrounding community.	Durham Business School
Faraj, Samer and Molly McLure Wasko	2001 - 10	The Web of Knowledge: An Investigation of Knowledge Exchange in Networks of Practice	full paper (107 KB)	Electronic ties are loosening the constraints of organizational structure and physical proximity to allow connectivity between individuals who would otherwise find it difficult to identify and sustain contact with others who share the similar interests. This paper explores the knowledge exchange processes in extra-organizational networks of practice by studying three technical newsgroups. We argue that the development of relational social capital is a vital component for transforming electronic posting forums into ongoing networks of practice. The results reveal that relational social capital exists on networks of practice and shows a strong relationship with knowledge exchange processes over and above the influence of individual motivation and ability.	University of Maryland, Florida State University
Edwards, Kasper	2001 - 07	Epistemic Communities, Situated Learning and Open Source Software	full paper (99 KB)	This paper analyzes open source software development as an epistemic community where each individual open source software project is perceived as a single epistemic community. Open source software development is a learning process where the involved parties contribute to, and learn from, the community. It is discovered that theory of epistemic communities does indeed contribute to the understanding of open source software development.	Technical University of Denmark
Johnson, Justin Pappas	2000 - 12	Economics of Open Source Software	full paper (229 KB)	A simple model of open source software is presented. Individual user-programmers decide whether to invest their valuable time and effort to develop a software application that will become a public good if so developed. The benefits and drawbacks of open source versus profit driven developments are presented. The effect of changing the population size of user-programmers is considered; finite and asymptotic results (relevant for some of the larger projects that exist) are given.	Cornell University
Pope, William	2001 -06	The Use of Computer Conferencing as an Organizational Knowledge Transfer	dissertation (796 KB)	Electronic bulletin boards were used as an organization-wide problem solving process that transferred private knowledge. Key organizational implications were found.
Franke, Nik and Sonali Shah	2001 - 08	How Communities Support Innovative Activities: As Exploration of Assistance and Sharing Among Innovative Users of Sporting Equipment	full paper (191 KB)	This exploratory study finds that end-user innovators who are members of voluntary sports communities often receive assistance in developing their sports-equipment innovations from fellow community members. Innovation-related information and assistance, as well as the innovations themselves, are freely within these communities. The processes by which these communities operate may be of general interest both within and beyond the consumer product arena; for example, communities of open source software developers appear to operate in similar ways.	Vienna University, MIT
Shah, Sonali	2000 - 11	Sources and Patterns of Innovation in a Consumer Products Field: Innovations in Sporting Equipment	full paper (138 KB)	This study investigates the innovation histories of 57 important skateboarding, snowboarding, and windsurfing equipment innovations. Contrary to conventional wisdom, equipment for these new sports was not developed by existing sports equipment manufacturing companies. Innovations were instead developed by a few early and active participants in the new sports - users who built innovative equipment for themselves, their friends, and often built businesses focused on producing such equipment in order to appropriate benefit from their innovations and establish a lifestyle around the sport.	MIT
Weber, Steven	2000 - 06	The Political Economy of Open Source	full paper	The paper describes the open source process and characterizes more fully the economic, technological, and social systems that together constitute this distinct mode of production. The paper explains the open source process, by answering three questions about individual motivations, coordination, and complexity using a compoud argument of microfoundations, economic logic, and social/political structure.	UC Berkeley
von Hippel, Eric	2001 - 03	Open Source Shows the Way - Innovation By and For Users - No Manufacturer Required	full paper (33 KB)	Open source software projects are complete innovation development and consumption communities run by and for users, no manufacturer required. This essay points out that user innovation communities have existed long before and extend far beyond open source software. The example of user innovation communities as the developers of new sports, sporting techniques, and new sporting equipment is described.	MIT
Tuomi, Ilkka	2000 - 11	Internet Innovation and Open Source: Actors in the Network	full paper	The paper analyzes the growth and development of the Linux community and demonstrates how it evolves into an ecology of community-centered practices.	Nokia Research Center / SITRA
Moon, JY & Sproull, Lee	2000 - 11	Essence of Distributed Work: The Case of the Linux Kernel	full paper (full paper)	This paper provides a historical account of how the Linux operating system kernel was developed from three different perspectives. Each focuses on different critical factors in its success at the individual, group, and community levels. The paper concludes by summarizing the factors important in the successful distributed development of the Linux kernel, and the implications for organizationally managed distributed work arrangements.	NYU
Lerner, Josh & Triole, Jean	2000 - 03	The Simple Economics of Open Source	full paper (287 KB)	This paper makes a preliminary exploration of the economics of open source software. The authors highlight the extent to which labor economics, especially the literature of career concerns can explain many of these project features.	NBER
Lee, Gwendolyn & Cole, Robert	2000 - 10	The Linux Kernel Development As a Model of Knowledge Creation	abstract (4.66 KB)	Applying the method of induction theory building, the authors have developed a case study based on the Linux kernel development process to build a model of Open Source knowledge creation.	UC Berkeley
Lakhani, Karim & von Hippel, Eric	2002 - 06	How Open Source Software Works: Free User to User Assistance	full paper (97.8 KB)	Research into free and open source software development projects has so far largely focused on how the major tasks of software development are organized and motivated. But a complete project requires the execution of "mundane but necessary" tasks as well. In this paper, we explore how the mundane but necessary task of field support is organized in the case of Apache server software, and why some project participants are motivated to provide this service gratis to others. We find that the Apache field support system functions effectively. We also find that, when we partition the help system into its component tasks, 99% of the effort expended by information providers in fact returns direct learning benefits to those providers. This finding considerably reduces the puzzle of why information providers are willing to perform this task "for free." Implications are discussed.	MIT
Kuan, Jenny	2000 - 10	Open Source Software As Consumer Integration Into Production	full paper (1.57 MB)	The author proposes a model of consumer integration into production as means of understanding the Open Source software phenomenon.	UC Berkeley
Koch, Stefan & Schneider, Georg	2000	Results From Software Engineering Research Into Open Source Development Projects Using Public Data	full paper (417 KB)	This paper presents first results from research into open source projects from a software engineering perspective. The research methodology employed relies on public data retrieved from the CVS-repository of the GNOME project and relevant discussion groups. This methodology is described in detail and some of the results concerning the special characteristics of open source software development are given.	Vienna University of Economics and BA
Khalak, Asif	2000 - 11	Economic Model for Impact of Open Source Software	full paper (152 KB)	This paper presents an economic model of the impact of Open Source Software (OSS) upon a commercial software market. Agents are used to model the users (buyers), the companies (sellers), the code bank (marketplace), and the OSS community (source of free goods). The effect of introducing open source products into an equilibrium commercial market is investigated with respect to demand structure.	MIT
Kelty, Christopher	1999 - 12	Scale and Convention: Programmed Languages in a Regulated America	Ph.D. thesis	This thesis is a combination of an ethnography of an internet healthcare startup company and a philosophical investigation of technical standards, open and closed. Chapters K, L, and M are introductions to three main figures in the Open Source movement between 1998-2000 -- Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, and Eric Raymond.	MIT
Harhoff, Dietmar, J. Henkel & E. von Hippel	2000 - 07	Profiting From Voluntary Information Spillovers: How Users Benefit By Freely Revealing Their Innovations	full paper (125 KB)	Software users reveal the code they have written to other users for free. This behavior is contrary to conventional wisdom in economics - but is essential to the functioning of an effective user innovation community. This paper explores conditions under which the free revealing of innovations (code, in the case of OS) pays for innovating users.	University of Munich, CEPR, MIT
Bessen, Jim	2002 - 06	Open Source Software: Free Provision of a Complex Public Good	full paper	Open source software, developed by volunteers, appears counter to conventional wisdom about private provision of public goods. Standard arguments suggest that proprietary provision should be more efficient. But complex open source products challenge commercially-developed software in quality and market share. I argue that the complexity of software changes the results. With complex software, standard products cannot address all consumer needs and proprietary custom solutions are not always offered. Open source allows consumers to create their own customizations. When such user-customizations are then shared, open source products grow in quality and features. Open source extends the market for complex products.	Research on Innovation

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