Firms' Resource Deployment and Project Leadership in Open Source Software Development

Abstract

When using the open source software (OSS), development model firms face the challenge to balance the tension between the integration of knowledge from external individuals and the desire for control. In our investigation, we draw upon a data set consisting of 109 projects with 912 individual programmers and 110 involved firms and show how those different projects are governed in terms of project leadership. Our four hypotheses show that despite the wish for external knowledge from voluntary programmers firms are relying on own resources or those from other firms to control a project, that projects with low firm participation are mainly led by voluntary committers, and that projects with high firm participation are mainly led by paid leaders. This research extends the dominating literature by providing empirical evidence in that area and helps to deepen our understanding of firm participation in OSS projects as a form of open innovation activity.

Private-Collective Innovation and Open Source Software: Longitudinal Insights from Linux Kernel Development

“…The engagement of companies has increased in the last years, as more and more firms have business models that rely on the kernel. Although companies cannot dictate what the community should do, they can in a way influence the trajectory of the project by assigning employed developers to the project [10,47]. As the results of our study for the LK project show, employed developers can take key positions in a community due to the intensity of the commitment, expressed by activity and importance, for the community.…”

“…While in early years, software technology companies such as IBM and Novell invested time and resources in OSS development, today even user firms (e.g., Samsung) invest in OSS development [8]. Thus, today's successful OSS projects receive contributions from hobbyists, universities, research centers, as well as from software vendors and user firms [9,10]. Theorists have referred to this kind of combined public and private investments in innovation creation as private-collective innovation [11].…”

Investigating Power Relations in Open Source Software Ecosystems

“…Thus, the only motivation for contribution was to help to solve problems or to evolve a project [AlMarzouq et al 2015]. For some time now, open-source contributions are made not only by volunteers, but also by paid developers [Schaarschmidt and Kortzfleisch 2015]. The motivations to contribute with OSS have been changing recently, focusing more on learning, career, and payment motivations [Gerosa et al 2021].…”