Competing communities of users and developers of computer software: competition between open source software and commercial software

The open source movement is a group of volunteer programmers that has recently caused quite a stir in the software market. The volunteers of this group develop computer operating systems, programming languages, and other software. They work together in teams that communicate via the Internet. Their goal is to develop useful software that is available for free and that users can change at will. To enable users to change and improve the software, they distribute their software not only in compiled form (that a computer needs to actually run the software), but also in its source code (the lines of code that programmers write). This cooperation breaks through the usual barriers that separate corporate suppliers from their buyers. This may represent the first example where the Internet enables cooperation on a scale that changes market dynamics. This paper studies the interaction between the network dynamics of the open source movement and the dynamics of a commercial software supplier. It makes our first step in identifying conditions that support a successful development of open source software. We focus on one particular set of projects within the open source movement, namely the Linux computer operating system.management and organization theory ;

Open Source Software: From Open Science to New Marketing Models

-Open source Software; Intellectual Property; Licensing; Business Model.

More open than open innovation? Rethinking the concept of openness in innovation studies.

This paper re-examines the concept of open innovation developed in organization sciences (Chesbrough, 2003a). We claim that this paradigm, which insists on the distributive nature of innovation among a wide range of heterogeneous actors, does not put enough emphasis on the condition of access to knowledge. Yet, the open dimension of knowledge is a very important feature to sustain a collective mode of innovation. We propose therefore a stronger definition of open innovation, which is based on three constitutive characteristics: (i) Firms voluntarily release knowledge; (ii) Knowledge is open, i.e. is available to all interested parties without discrimination; (iii) dynamic interactions take place among the stakeholders to enrich the open knowledge base. Examples that fit our definition of open innovation are open science, user centered innovation (von Hippel, 2005), free-libre open source software, collective invention (Allen, 1983), etc. We conclude with a discussion on the role of IPR to secure open innovation.open source, free software, intellectual property rights (IPR), open innovation, collective invention.

Quire: Lightweight Provenance for Smart Phone Operating Systems

Smartphone apps often run with full privileges to access the network and sensitive local resources, making it difficult for remote systems to have any trust in the provenance of network connections they receive. Even within the phone, different apps with different privileges can communicate with one another, allowing one app to trick another into improperly exercising its privileges (a Confused Deputy attack). In Quire, we engineered two new security mechanisms into Android to address these issues. First, we track the call chain of IPCs, allowing an app the choice of operating with the diminished privileges of its callers or to act explicitly on its own behalf. Second, a lightweight signature scheme allows any app to create a signed statement that can be verified anywhere inside the phone. Both of these mechanisms are reflected in network RPCs, allowing remote systems visibility into the state of the phone when an RPC is made. We demonstrate the usefulness of Quire with two example applications. We built an advertising service, running distinctly from the app which wants to display ads, which can validate clicks passed to it from its host. We also built a payment service, allowing an app to issue a request which the payment service validates with the user. An app cannot not forge a payment request by directly connecting to the remote server, nor can the local payment service tamper with the request

SOFTWARE: FROM PRODUCT TO SERVICE THE EVOLUTION OF A MODEL

Among the consequences of the Enterprise 2.0 family technologies’ growingpopularity, we can observe the rise of a set of new business models for the use and employment ofsoftware applications, some of them also applicable for infrastructure components. The mostpopular of these models is by far Software as a Service (also called SaaS). SaaS is a softwaredistribution model assuming the software applications are hosted and maintained by the vendor orthe distributor, the user access being granted exclusively by means of the Internet. The paper athand is a literature review and also an action research, meant to provide an objective and unbiasedcomparison of the two major software distribution models, and also to identify the strengths, theweaknesses and the favorite areas of applicability for each model. The paper is a part of a largerresearch performed by the author in the field of Enterprise 2.0 technologies.Organizational knowledge, Enterprise 2.0, Software as a Service, Web 2.0, Semantic Web

Choosing IT Platforms In The Age Of Stuxnet

This paper addresses the question of choosing/investing in IT (hardware/software) platforms that avoid quick obsolescence and the underlying dilemmas of choosing proprietary software versus open source software, and opting for managed services such as public cloud computing versus in-house hardware/communication infrastructures.  These dilemmas in strategic information systems planning have become more significant in light of the recent revelations of security backdoors in commercial software, encryption backdoors in communication software, and governmental access to private data on managed services for national security reasons.  This paper considers enterprise-wide challenges and strategies for adopting open source software/hardware in response to these security concerns

Spartan Daily, February 1, 1996

Volume 106, Issue 5https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8790/thumbnail.jp

The Birth of a New Industry: Entry by Start-ups and the Drivers of Firm Growth. The Case of Encryption Software

The paper analyses the birth of the Encryption Software Industry (ESI), a new niche in the software industry. Using a Chandlerian perspective, this work reports the main facts about firm entry and growth, with a particular focus on start-up strategies and actions. Since scale economies do not play a major role in ESI, the paper investigates the different sources of firm competitive advantages. This work shows that innovation and product differentiation, along with investments in co-specialised assets, are variables strongly correlated to young firm probability to survive and grow. In so doing, we have collected highly detailed information on product introduction, US patents granted, worldwide alliances and biographical data of firm founders.Entry, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Software.

Internet... the final frontier: an ethnographic account: exploring the cultural space of the Net from the inside

The research project The Internet as a space for interaction, which completed its mission in Autumn 1998, studied the constitutive features of network culture and network organisation. Special emphasis was given to the dynamic interplay of technical and social conventions regarding both the Net’s organisation as well as its change. The ethnographic perspective chosen studied the Internet from the inside. Research concentrated upon three fields of study: the hegemonial operating technology of net nodes (UNIX) the network’s basic transmission technology (the Internet Protocol IP) and a popular communication service (Usenet). The project’s final report includes the results of the three branches explored. Drawing upon the development in the three fields it is shown that changes that come about on the Net are neither anarchic nor arbitrary. Instead, the decentrally organised Internet is based upon technically and organisationally distributed forms of coordination within which individual preferences collectively attain the power of developing into definitive standards. --