A structure for innovation reproduction in the Eclipse OSS ecosystem

Abstract

In an open source software (OSS) development community supported by spontaneous volunteers, personal interests, technical capabilities, hunger for fame, and the satisfaction of contributing to the public good are said to be motivating factor for participation. In that community, vendors always play auxiliary roles, and integrate the result of OSS into their business activities. However, in the Eclipse open source software community, the main role of OSS development activities is taken over by vendors. The relationship between individuals and vendors is reversed. Therefore, it becomes important to maintain the motivation of the development community, promote innovation and link the activities to the profit of vendors. In other words, management of co-creation and competition are being conducted at the same time. This paper tries to clarify internal and external structures in an OSS ecosystem led by vendors considering the Eclipse community as one particular case. It also constructs a co-creation model to promote sustainable development for an OSS ecosystem. Some mechanisms that drive this process are embedded everywhere in the Eclipse ecosystem.