Open Source Software in Complex Domains: Current Perceptions in the Embedded Systems Area

With Nokia’s 770 and N800 Internet Tablets heavily utilising Open Source software, it is timely to ask whether – and if so to what extent – Open Source has made ingress into complex application domains such as embedded systems. In this paper we report on a qualitative study of perceptions of Open Source software in the secondary software sector, and in particular companies deploying embedded software. Although the sector is historically associated in Open Source software studies with uptake of embedded Linux, we find broader acceptance. The level of reasoning about Open Source quality and trust issues found was commensurate with that expressed in the literature. The classical strengths of Open Source, namely mass inspection, ease of conducting trials, longevity and source code access for debugging, were at the forefront of thinking. However, there was an acknowledgement that more guidelines were needed for assessing and incorporating Open Source software in products

Nokia on the slope: the failure of a hybrid open/closed source model

This case study explores the origins of Nokia’s decline in the mobile technology market, as an unsuccessful attempt to introduce an open-source strategy into the business. Nokia created a hybrid model, which codified conflicting principles taken from closed and open mode of collaboration. A series of implementation problems resulted in Nokia struggling to attract open-source partners, growing issues with managing in-house staff and ultimately failing to develop a new mobile operating system fast enough to stay competitive

Identification and Importance of the Technological Risks of Open Source Software in the Enterprise Adoption Context

Open source software (OSS) has reshaped and remodeled various layers of the organizational ecosystem, becoming an important strategic asset for enterprises. Still, many enterprises are reluctant to adopt OSS. Knowledge about technological risks and their importance for IT executives is still under researched. We aim to identify the technological risks and their importance for OSS adoption during the risk identification phase in the enterprise context. We conducted an extensive literature review, identifying 34 risk factors from 88 papers, followed by an online survey of 115 IT executives to study the risk factors\u27 importance. Our results will be very valuable for practitioners to use when evaluating, assessing and calculating the risks related to OSS product adoption. Also, researchers can use it as a base for future studies to expand current theoretical understanding of the OSS phenomenon related to IT risk management

A study of the Open Source – business setting

This research project examines how the conflicting institutional logics are dealt with in a hybrid organisational form. The empirical setting of the study is an Open Source – business collaboration in software development projects. The idea of making a case study of the Open Source – business collaboration is interesting from both theoretical and business perspectives. Since companies realised that the world’s most talented people are distributed throughout various organisations, rather than members of a single team or corporation, the open innovation model could be neither underestimated nor ignored by the business. However, that solution brings new challenges, especially for business-oriented organisations. The challenges come from the significant differences between new open models and the classic closed-innovation model, which grew on the concept of the institution of the intellectual property rights. Open Source, on the contrary, is intrinsically an anti-corporational, pro-knowledge-sharing and creativity motivated movement. As a result, in the era of open collaboration in knowledge-integrating platforms the everyday problems are constituted of dealing with mixture of institutional backgrounds, business models and professional identities.....