145,978 research outputs found
A New Way of Measuring Openness: The Open Governance Index
Open source software is now "business as usual" in the mobile industry. While much attention is given to the importance of open source licenses, we argue in this article that the governance model can be as necessary to a projectâs success and that projects vary widely in the governance models â whether open or closed â that they employ. Open source governance models describe the control points that are used to influence open source projects with regard to access to the source code, how the source code is developed, how derivatives are created, and the community structure of the project. Governance determines who has control over the project beyond what is deemed legally necessary via the open source licenses for that project. The purpose of our research is to define and measure the governance of open source projects, in other words, the extent to which decision-making in an open source project is "open" or "closed". We analyzed eight open source projects using 13 specific governance criteria across four areas of governance: access, development, derivatives and community. Our findings suggest that the most open platforms will be most successful in the long term, however we acknowledge exceptions to this rule. We also identify best practices that are common across these open source projects with regard to source code access, development of source code, management of derivatives, and community structure. These best practices increase the likelihood of developer use of and involvement in open source projects
Firms on SourceForge
This paper explores empirically what factors inïŹuence a ïŹrmâs decision to contribute and to take leadership in open source projects. Increasing ïŹrmsâ participation in the development of open source software (OSS) is generally perceived as a puzzle. Assuming that ïŹrms face a âMake-or-Buyâ decision before using OSS, we argue that contribution is in fact the best way for them to keep control of their supplier in a context where incomplete open source licenses govern transactions. Building on this proposition, we derive predictions on the drivers of ïŹrmsâ contribution and leadership in open source projects, and test them on a unique dataset of 4,808 open source projects extracted from Sourceforge. Our empirical ïŹndings conïŹrm the predictions and lend support to our hypotheses.Open source; transaction cost; governance; firm boundaries; software
Going open: Does it mean giving away control?
Open source software has evolved from being an effort driven by a collective of volunteers to become an integral part of commercial software. Constant demands for new features besides maintaining product quality made companies seek open source as an answer for these demands. These growing demands brought with them control of quality, architecture, contribution management, and community management.
This article explores the governance strategies adopted by open source software projects to manage the quality of complements (such as plug-ins that extend a platform's functionality) developed by community members outside the core team. The outcomes of the research contribute to our understanding of the strategies followed by different open source platform owners (the open source project initiators) to manage external innovation in the case of platform extensions in two areas: i) governance models and ii) regulatory tools
Contrasting Community Building in Sponsored and Community Founded Open Source Projects
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
A Research Agenda for Studying Open Source I: A Multi-Level Framework
This paper presents a research agenda for studying information systems using open source software A multi-level research model is developed at five discrete levels of analysis: (1) the artifact; (2) the individual; (3) the team, project, and community; (4) the organization; and (5) society. Each level is discussed in terms of key issues within the level. Examples are based on prior research. In a companion paper, [Niederman, et al 2006], we view the agenda through the lens of referent discipline theories
Research Agenda for Studying Open Source II: View Through the Lens of Referent Discipline Theories
In a companion paper [Niederman et al., 2006] we presented a multi-level research agenda for studying information systems using open source software. This paper examines open source in terms of MIS and referent discipline theories that are the base needed for rigorous study of the research agenda
Myths and Realities about Online Forums in Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Study
The use of free and open source software (OSS) is gaining momentum due to the
ever increasing availability and use of the Internet. Organizations are also
now adopting open source software, despite some reservations, in particular
regarding the provision and availability of support. Some of the biggest
concerns about free and open source software are post release software defects
and their rectification, management of dynamic requirements and support to the
users. A common belief is that there is no appropriate support available for
this class of software. A contradictory argument is that due to the active
involvement of Internet users in online forums, there is in fact a large
resource available that communicates and manages the provision of support. The
research model of this empirical investigation examines the evidence available
to assess whether this commonly held belief is based on facts given the current
developments in OSS or simply a myth, which has developed around OSS
development. We analyzed a dataset consisting of 1880 open source software
projects covering a broad range of categories in this investigation. The
results show that online forums play a significant role in managing software
defects, implementation of new requirements and providing support to the users
in open source software and have become a major source of assistance in
maintenance of the open source projects
Internet Utopianism and the Practical Inevitability of Law
Writing at the dawn of the digital era, John Perry Barlow proclaimed cyberspace to be a new domain of pure freedom. Addressing the nations of the world, he cautioned that their laws, which were âbased on matter,â simply did not speak to conduct in the new virtual realm. As both Barlow and the cyberlaw scholars who took up his call recognized, that was not so much a statement of fact as it was an exercise in deliberate utopianism. But it has proved prescient in a way that they certainly did not intend. The âlawsâ that increasingly have no meaning in online environments include not only the mandates of market regulators but also the guarantees that supposedly protect the fundamental rights of internet users, including the expressive and associational freedoms whose supremacy Barlow asserted. More generally, in the networked information era, protections for fundamental human rights â both on- and offline â have begun to fail comprehensively.
Cyberlaw scholarship in the Barlowian mold isnât to blame for the worldwide erosion of protections for fundamental rights, but it also hasnât helped as much as it might have. In this essay, adapted from a forthcoming book on the evolution of legal institutions in the information era, I identify and briefly examine three intersecting flavors of internet utopianism in cyberlegal thought that are worth reexamining. It has become increasingly apparent that functioning legal institutions have indispensable roles to play in protecting and advancing human freedom. It has also become increasingly apparent, however, that the legal institutions we need are different than the ones we have
Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?
Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors
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