12 research outputs found
Why do commercial companies contribute to open source software?
This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link belowMany researchers have pointed out that the opensource movement is an interesting phenomenon that is difficult to explain with conventional economic theories. However, while there is no shortage on research on individualsâ motivation for contributing to opensource, few have investigated the commercial companiesâ motivations for doing the same. A case study was conducted at three different companies from the IT service industry, to investigate three possible drivers: sale of complimentary services, innovation and open sourcing (outsourcing). We offer three conclusions. First, we identified three main drivers for contributing to opensource, which are (a) selling complimentary services, (b) building greater innovative capability and (c) cost reduction through open sourcing to an external community. Second, while previous research has documented that the most important driver is selling complimentary services, we found that this picture is too simple. Our evidence points to a broader set of motivations, in the sense that all our cases exhibit combinations of the three drivers. Finally, our findings suggest that there might be a shift in how commercial companies view opensource software. The companies interviewed have all expressed a moral obligation to contribute to open source
ANALIZA UPORABNE VRIJEDNOSTI ZASTARJELOG SKLOPOVLJA KORIĆ TENJEM SOFTVERA OTVORENOG KODA
At the beginning of the 21st century, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) became an
essential element of all spheres of life. The great opportunities these technologies provide are
insufficiently used in many developing countries and one of the reasons for this is the lack of equipment.
The aim of this paper is to present new areas for researches in the field of information systems, as
well as showcase the opportunities and impacts of Open Source Software. The paper compares Microsoft
Windows and GNU/Linux Ubuntu operating systems, the applicability and superiority of which have long
been debated in the world of information technologies. The paper determines the possibilities for the
prolonged use of old hardware by using open source software. In order to prove the applicability of these
systems on old hardware, we have conducted tests that indicate the possibility of using both systems on
the same hardware architectures.PoÄetkom 21. stoljeÄa informacijske i komunikacijske tehnologije (IKT) postale su kljuÄni element
u svim sferama ĆŸivota. Ć iroki raspon moguÄnosti koje ove tehnologije pruĆŸaju nedovoljno se koriste u
mnogim zemljama u razvoju, a jedan je od razloga za to nedostatak opreme. Cilj je ovoga rada predstaviti
nova podruÄja za istraĆŸivanje u podruÄju informacijskih sustava, kao i prikazati moguÄnosti i utjecaje
softvera otvorenog koda. Rad usporeÄuje operativne sustave Microsoft WIndows i GNU/Linux Ubuntu, o Äijoj
se primjenjivosti i superiornosti dugo raspravlja u svijetu informacijskih tehnologija. Rad odreÄuje
moguÄnosti za produljeno koriĆĄtenje zastarjelog sklopovlja uporabom softvera otvorenog koda. Kako bi se
dokazala primjenjivost ovih sustava na zastarjelom sklopovlju, provedeni su testovi koji upuÄuju na
moguÄnost koriĆĄtenja oba sustava na istim arhitekturama sklopovlja
CAN FIRMS IMPROVE PERFORMANCE THROUGH EXTERNAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEIR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS?
A growing number of firms are developing open-source software (OSS) projects to get external contributions from developers unaffiliated with them. We investigate the impact of external contributions to a firmâs OSS projects on its performance measured by Tobinâs q and how the amount of comment activities within the firmâs OSS projects moderates this effect. Using a panel of 536 publicly listed firms over 2011-2019, we find that external contributions to a firmâs OSS projects have a positive impact on the Tobinâs q value of the firm. Moreover, this performance effect is strengthened when there are more comment activities within the firmâs OSS projects. Our study contributes to the literature and generates managerial implications for firms and OSS communities
Why Open Source?: Exploring the Motivations of Using an Open Model for Hardware Development
Following the successful adoption of the open source model in the software realm, open source is becoming a new design paradigm in hardware development. Open source models for tangible products are still in its infancy, and many studies are required to demonstrate its application to for-profit product development. It is an alluring question why entrepreneurs decide to use an open model to develop their products under risks and unknowns, such as infringement and community management. The goal of this paper is to investigate the motivations of entrepreneurs of open source hardware companies. The leaders and founders of twentythree companies were interviewed to understand their motivation and experiences in creating a company based on open source hardware. Based on these interviews, we generated a hierarchical framework to explain these motivations, where each level of the framework has been defined, explained and illustrated with representative quotes. The motivations of open source action are framed by two categories in the paper: 1) Intrinsic Motivation, which describes the motivations of an entrepreneur as an individual, who needs personal satisfaction, enjoyment as well as altruism and reciprocity; 2) Extrinsic Motivation, which describes motivations of an entrepreneur whose identity is as a for-profit company leader
Commerce, community and digital gifts
Commerce, community and digital gift
The moral economy of digital gifts
The significance of giving as a contemporary socio-economic practice has been obscured both by mainstream economics and by the influence of the anthropological tradition. Andrew Sayerâs concept of moral economy offers a more fruitful framework for an economic sociology of contemporary giving, and one that appears to be largely consistent with social quality approaches. This paper analyses giving from the perspective of moral economy, questioning the view that giving is a form of exchange, and opening up the prospect of seeing it as the outcome of a more complex constellation of causal factors. It uses examples from the digital economy, in particular the phenomenon of open source software, which nicely illustrates both the progressive potential of digital gifts and the ways in which they can be absorbed into the commercial economy
To Cloud or not to Cloud. Strategic choices and IT governance in the digital transformation of a University
One late evening on 21st March 2015, Francesca \u2013 Head of Research and Teaching office at The
University \u2013 ran the meeting and was hoping that the information and insights collected enabled
her to make the right decision. She initiated the meeting by telling the story that few days ago on
15th March, during the presentation of a new digital solution for universities by MG company,
she realized how different can be the instructors\u2019 practices in managing teaching materials and
interacting with students. She gave examples of tools and functions used by University instructors
such as personal webpages, blogs, Moodle, Dropbox, Google Drive, iTunes, WordPress, Facebook
groups, Blackboard, etc. Francesca knew how important innovation is in a competitive higher
education market. Therefore, Francesca has always been supportive on teaching experiments
made by instructors. For instance, in 2007, she encouraged the Information Systems (IS) research
group at University in adopting Moodle as a Learning Management System (LMS) for their IS
courses. In 2014, the positive feedback collected from both students and instructors who used
Moodle, led Francesca to pilot the system at University level. Simone, a member of the IS group,
was in charge of the implementation and received full support from the IT Office. After one year,
the new learning platform was available for any instructor interested in experimenting the
Moodle functionalities. However, during the last exam session, the learning platform was down
for few hours. Not only students were unable to access the teaching materials to prepare for the
exams, but also professors were unable to assess students works!
\u201cWhy not having one platform to support all our teaching practices? One channel to interact with
our students\u201d she said. She asked for inputs and insights from a team of experts before making a
decision. Francesca\u2019s idea was to have a single Learning Management System (LMS) supporting
more than 60 programs in the four University departments. Now the problem was to select a
proper technological solution, fitting with the needs of both students and instructors, and also
reducing the risk of downtime. Especially knowing that many instructors will not be happy to
standardize their practices, she wondered how to convince them to use the new system
Giving and social transformation
Giving plays an important role in the contemporary economy, but this has been obscured by the perspectives of both mainstream economics and Marxist political economy. This paper draws on the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham to argue that this stunts our imagination about alternative futures, and on the work of Erik Olin Wright to suggest that gift-oriented economic practices could play a significant part in such futures. The most promising alternative economic futures involve not the replacement of a monolithic capitalism with some other monolithic alternative, but rather a changing mix of already-diverse economic practices. One part of the Marxist tradition that stands in the way of such thinking is its employment of the concept of modes of production, and the paper proposes complexes of appropriative practices as an alternative or supplementary concept
Open source software GitHub ecosystem: a SEM approach
Open source software (OSS) is a collaborative effort. Getting affordable high-quality software with less probability of errors or fails is not far away. Thousands of open-source projects (termed repos) are alternatives to proprietary software development. More than two-thirds of companies are contributing to open source. Open source technologies like OpenStack, Docker and KVM are being used to build the next generation of digital infrastructure. An iconic example of OSS is 'GitHub' - a successful social site. GitHub is a hosting platform that host repositories (repos) based on the Git version control system.
GitHub is a knowledge-based workspace. It has several features that facilitate user communication and work integration. Through this thesis I employ data extracted from GitHub, and seek to better understand the OSS ecosystem, and to what extent each of its deployed elements affects the successful development of the OSS ecosystem. In addition, I investigate a repo's growth over different time periods to test the changing behavior of the repo. From our observations developers do not follow one development methodology when developing, and growing their project, and such developers tend to cherry-pick from differing available software methodologies.
GitHub API remains the main OSS location engaged to extract the metadata for this thesis's research. This extraction process is time-consuming - due to restrictive access limitations (even with authentication). I apply Structure Equation Modelling (termed SEM) to investigate the relative path relationships between the GitHub- deployed OSS elements, and I determine the path strength contributions of each element to determine the OSS repo's activity level.
SEM is a multivariate statistical analysis technique used to analyze structural relationships. This technique is the combination of factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. It is used to analyze the structural relationship between measured variables and/or latent constructs.
This thesis bridges the research gap around longitude OSS studies. It engages large sample-size OSS repo metadata sets, data-quality control, and multiple programming language comparisons. Querying GitHub is not direct (nor simple) yet querying for all valid repos remains important - as sometimes illegal, or unrepresentative outlier repos (which may even be quite popular) do arise, and these then need to be removed from each initial OSS's language-specific metadata set.
Eight top GitHub programming languages, (selected as the most forked repos) are separately engaged in this thesis's research. This thesis observes these eight metadata sets of GitHub repos. Over time, it measures the different repo contributions of the deployed elements of each metadata set.
The number of stars-provided to the repo delivers a weaker contribution to its software development processes. Sometimes forks work against the repo's progress by generating very minor negative total effects into its commit (activity) level, and by sometimes diluting the focus of the repo's software development strategies. Here, a fork may generate new ideas, create a new repo, and then draw some original repo developers off into this new software development direction, thus retarding the original repo's commit (activity) level progression.
Multiple intermittent and minor version releases exert lesser GitHub JavaScript repo commit (or activity) changes because they often involve only slight OSS improvements, and because they only require minimal commit/commits contributions. More commit(s) also bring more changes to documentation, and again the GitHub OSS repo's commit (activity) level rises.
There are both direct and indirect drivers of the repo's OSS activity. Pulls and commits are the strongest drivers. This suggests creating higher levels of pull requests is likely a preferred prime target consideration for the repo creator's core team of developers.
This study offers a big data direction for future work. It allows for the deployment of more sophisticated statistical comparison techniques. It offers further indications around the internal and broad relationships that likely exist between GitHub's OSS big data. Its data extraction ideas suggest a link through to business/consumer consumption, and possibly how these may be connected using improved repo search algorithms that release individual business value components
A systematic examination of knowledge loss in open source software projects
Context Open Source Software (OSS) development is a knowledge focused activity which relies heavily on contributors who can be volunteers or paid workers and are geographically distributed. While working on OSS projects contributors acquire project related individualistic knowledge and gain experience and skills, which often remains unshared with others and is usually lost once contributors leave a project. All software development organisations face the problem of knowledge loss as employees leave, but this situation is exasperated in OSS projects where most contributors are volunteers with largely unpredictable engagement durations. Contributor turnover is inevitable due to the transient nature of OSS project workforces causing knowledge loss, which threatens the overall sustainability of OSS projects and impacts negatively on software quality and contributor productivity.
Objective
The objective of this work is to deeply and systematically investigate the phenomenon of knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects as presented in the state-of-the-art literature and to synthesise the information presented on the topic. Furthermore, based on the learning arising from our investigation it is our intention to identify mechanisms to reduce the overall effects of knowledge loss in OSS projects.
Methodology
We use the snowballing methodology to identify the relevant literature on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects. This robust methodology for a literature review includes research question, search strategy, inclusion, exclusion, quality criteria, and data synthesis. The search strategy, and inclusion, exclusions and quality criteria are applied as a part of snowballing procedure.
Snowballing is considered an efficient and reliable way to conduct a systematic literature review, providing a robust alternative to mechanically searching individual databases for given topics.
Result
Knowledge sharing in OSS projects is abundant but there is no evidence of a formal strategy or practice to manage knowledge. Due to the dynamic and diverse nature of OSS projects, knowledge management is considered a challenging task and there is a need for a proactive mechanism to share knowledge in the OSS community for knowledge to be reused in the future by the OSS project contributors. From the collection of papers found using snowballing, we consolidated various themes on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects and identified 11 impacts due to knowledge loss in OSS projects, and 10 mitigations to manage with knowledge loss in OSS projects.
Conclusion
In this paper, we propose future research directions to investigate integration of proactive knowledge retention practices with the existing OSS practices to reduce the current knowledge loss problem. We suggest that there is insufficient attention paid to KM in general in OSS, in particular there would appear to an absence of proactive measures to reduce the potential impact of knowledge loss. We also propose the need for a KM evaluation metric in OSS projects, similar to the ones that evaluate health of online communities, which should help to inform potential consumers of the OSS of the KM status on a project, something that is not existent today