Firms' contribution to open source software and the dominant skilled user

: Free/libre or open-source software (FLOSS) is nowadays produced not only by individual benevolent developers but, in a growing proportion, by firms that hire programmers for their own objectives of development in open source or for contributing to open-source projects in the context of dedicated communities. A recent literature has focused on the question of the business models explaining how and why firms may draw benefits from such involvement and their connected activities. They can be considered as the building blocks of a new modus operandi of an industry, built on an alternative approach to intellectual property management. Its prospects will depend on both the firms' willingness to rally and its ability to compete with the traditional “proprietary” approach. As a matter of fact, firms' involvement in FLOSS, while growing, remains very contrasting, depending on the nature of the products and the characteristics of the markets. The aim of this paper is to emphasize that, beside factors like the importance of software as a core competence of the firm, the role of users on the related markets - and more precisely their level of skills - may provide a major explanation of such diversity. We introduce the concept of the dominant skilled user and we set up a theoretical model to better understand how it may condition the nature and outcome of the competition between a FLOSS firm and a proprietary firm. We discuss these results in the light of empirical stylized facts drawn from the recent trends in the software industrySoftware ; Open Source ; Intellectual Property ; Competition ; Users

Crafting a Systematic Literature Review on Open-Source Platforms

This working paper unveils the crafting of a systematic literature review on open-source platforms. The high-competitive mobile devices market, where several players such as Apple, Google, Nokia and Microsoft run a platforms- war with constant shifts in their technological strategies, is gaining increasing attention from scholars. It matters, then, to review previous literature on past platforms-wars, such as the ones from the PC and game-console industries, and assess its implications to the current mobile devices platforms-war. The paper starts by justifying the purpose and rationale behind this literature review on open-source platforms. The concepts of open-source software and computer-based platforms were then discussed both individually and in unison, in order to clarify the core-concept of 'open-source platform' that guides this literature review. The detailed design of the employed methodological strategy is then presented as the central part of this paper. The paper concludes with preliminary findings organizing previous literature on open-source platforms for the purpose of guiding future research in this area.Comment: As presented in 10th IFIP WG 2.13 International Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2014, San Jos\'e, Costa Rica, May 6-9, 201

A qualitative enquiry into OpenStreetMap making

Based on a case study on the OpenStreetMap community, this paper provides a contextual and embodied understanding of the user-led, user-participatory and user-generated produsage phenomenon. It employs Grounded Theory, Social Worlds Theory, and qualitative methods to illuminate and explores the produsage processes of OpenStreetMap making, and how knowledge artefacts such as maps can be collectively and collaboratively produced by a community of people, who are situated in different places around the world but engaged with the same repertoire of mapping practices. The empirical data illustrate that OpenStreetMap itself acts as a boundary object that enables actors from different social worlds to co-produce the Map through interacting with each other and negotiating the meanings of mapping, the mapping data and the Map itself. The discourses also show that unlike traditional maps that black-box cartographic knowledge and offer a single dominant perspective of cities or places, OpenStreetMap is an embodied epistemic object that embraces different world views. The paper also explores how contributors build their identities as an OpenStreetMaper alongside some other identities they have. Understanding the identity-building process helps to understand mapping as an embodied activity with emotional, cognitive and social repertoires

Research and Development Workstation Environment: the new class of Current Research Information Systems

Against the backdrop of the development of modern technologies in the field of scientific research the new class of Current Research Information Systems (CRIS) and related intelligent information technologies has arisen. It was called - Research and Development Workstation Environment (RDWE) - the comprehensive problem-oriented information systems for scientific research and development lifecycle support. The given paper describes design and development fundamentals of the RDWE class systems. The RDWE class system's generalized information model is represented in the article as a three-tuple composite web service that include: a set of atomic web services, each of them can be designed and developed as a microservice or a desktop application, that allows them to be used as an independent software separately; a set of functions, the functional filling-up of the Research and Development Workstation Environment; a subset of atomic web services that are required to implement function of composite web service. In accordance with the fundamental information model of the RDWE class the system for supporting research in the field of ontology engineering - the automated building of applied ontology in an arbitrary domain area, scientific and technical creativity - the automated preparation of application documents for patenting inventions in Ukraine was developed. It was called - Personal Research Information System. A distinctive feature of such systems is the possibility of their problematic orientation to various types of scientific activities by combining on a variety of functional services and adding new ones within the cloud integrated environment. The main results of our work are focused on enhancing the effectiveness of the scientist's research and development lifecycle in the arbitrary domain area.Comment: In English, 13 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, added references in Russian. Published. Prepared for special issue (UkrPROG 2018 conference) of the scientific journal "Problems of programming" (Founder: National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Software Systems of NAS Ukraine

Firms' contribution to open source software and the dominant skilled user

Free/libre or open-source software (FLOSS) is nowadays produced not only by individual benevolent developers but, in a growing proportion, by firms that hire programmers for their own objectives of development in open source or for contributing to open-source projects in the context of dedicated communities. A recent literature has focused on the question of the business models explaining how and why firms may draw benefits from such involvement and their connected activities. They can be considered as the building blocks of a new modus operandi of an industry, built on an alternative approach to intellectual property management. Its prospects will depend on both the firms' willingness to rally and its ability to compete with the traditional “proprietary” approach. As a matter of fact, firms' involvement in FLOSS, while growing, remains very contrasting, depending on the nature of the products and the characteristics of the markets. The aim of this paper is to emphasize that, beside factors like the importance of software as a core competence of the firm, the role of users on the related markets - and more precisely their level of skills - may provide a major explanation of such diversity. We introduce the concept of the dominant skilled user and we set up a theoretical model to better understand how it may condition the nature and outcome of the competition between a FLOSS firm and a proprietary firm. We discuss these results in the light of empirical stylized facts drawn from the recent trends in the software industr

Some Policy Issues on Open Source and Proprietary Software

Software industry is a fast growing sector of the economy which is undergoing significant changes both for the presence of the open source mode of production and for the challenges of globalization and convergence with other industries. This paper analyses the role of open source software (OSS) on competition and innovation in the software industry and debates the economic rationales for promoting the adoption of OSS by national and local governments.software industry, open source software, patent system

Dynamics of Innovation in an “Open Source” Collaboration Environment: Lurking, Laboring and Launching FLOSS Projects on SourceForge

A systems analysis perspective is adopted to examine the critical properties of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) mode of innovation, as reflected on the SourceForge platform (SF.net). This approach re-scales March’s (1991) framework and applies it to characterize the “innovation system” of a “distributed organization” of interacting agents in a virtual collaboration environment. The innovation system of the virtual collaboration environment is an emergent property of two “coupled” processes: one involves interactions among agents searching for information to use in designing novel software products, and the other involves the mobilization of individual capabilities for application in the software development projects. Micro-dynamics of this system are studied empirically by constructing transition probability matrices representing movements of 222,835 SF.net users among 7 different activity states. Estimated probabilities are found to form first-order Markov chains describing ergodic processes. This makes it possible to computate the equilibrium distribution of agents among the states, thereby suppressing transient effects and revealing persisting patterns of project-joining and project-launching.innovation systems, collaborative development environments, industrial districts, exploration and exploitation dynamics, open source software, FLOSS, SourceForge, project-joining, project-founding, Markov chain analysis.