Managing the boundary of an 'open' project

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, developed a membership process. We examine the project's face-to-face social network over a five-year period (1997-2001) to see how changes in the social structure affected the evolution of membership mechanisms and the determination of gatekeepers. While the amount and importance of a contributor's work increased the probability that a contributor would become a gatekeeper, those more central in the social network were 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.open source software; social networks; organizational design; institutional design;

Designing, Producing and Using Artifacts in the Structuration of Firm Knowledge: Evidence from Proprietary and Open Processes of Software Development.

In the paper we study the recursive nature of artifacts in the production and the socialization of organizational knowledge. In this respect, artifacts are interpreted both as the product (output) of organizational knowledge processes and, at the same time, as tools easing the development of other artifacts. We compare different practices of knowledge creation and diffusion in complex software production processes with the aim of understanding the effects of interplay between (1) coordination and control practices, (2) mediating artifacts and development tools, and (3) interactions between different actors in the development process. We aim at identifying the peculiar traits emerging in contrasting development paradigms, namely the closed, fully proprietary one widespread in the gaming console industry, and the open model of free/open source software development.video/computer game industry; artifacts; free/open source software; video game console

Designing, Producing and Using Artifacts in the Structuration of Firm Knowledge: Evidence from Proprietary and Open Processes of Software Development.

In the paper we study the recursive nature of artifacts in the production and the socialization of organizational knowledge. In this respect, artifacts are interpreted both as the product (output) of organizational knowledge processes and, at the same time, as tools easing the development of other artifacts. We compare different practices of knowledge creation and diffusion in complex software production processes with the aim of understanding the effects of interplay between (1) coordination and control practices, (2) mediating artifacts and development tools, and (3) interactions between different actors in the development process. We aim at identifying the peculiar traits emerging in contrasting development paradigms, namely the closed, fully proprietary one widespread in the gaming console industry, and the open model of free/open source software developmentvideo/computer game industry; artifacts; free/open source software; video game consoles