The governance of free/open source software projects: monolithic, multidimensional, or configurational?
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a qualitative review and synthesis of the literature on open source governance, addressing four key questions: (1) How has open source software (OSS) governance been defined? (2) Has the phenomenon of OSS governance been conceptualized as a monolithic or multidimensional phenomenon? (3) What purposes is OSS governance hypothesized to serve? and (4) What are the dimensions of OSS governance, and how are these dimensions related to each other? The results of the review suggest a framework for future comparative and case study research on OSS governance, and they provide a basis for comparison with research on the governance of other distributed, community-based forms of content and creation. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Springer in its journal Journal of Management & Governance.
Volume (Year): 11 (2007)
Issue (Month): 2 (May)
Pages: 151-163
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Web page: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=102940
Related research
Keywords: Collective action; Common pool resources/public goods; Coordination theory; Governance; Institutional theory; Motivation; Open source software;References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Franke, Nikolaus & Hippel, Eric von, 2003. "Satisfying heterogeneous user needs via innovation toolkits: the case of Apache security software," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1199-1215, July.
- Dahlander, Linus & Magnusson, Mats G., 2005. "Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 481-493, May.
- Hertel, Guido & Niedner, Sven & Herrmann, Stefanie, 2003. "Motivation of software developers in Open Source projects: an Internet-based survey of contributors to the Linux kernel," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1159-1177, July.
- Carliss Y. Baldwin & Kim B. Clark, 2006. "The Architecture of Participation: Does Code Architecture Mitigate Free Riding in the Open Source Development Model?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1116-1127, July.
- O'Mahony, Siobhan, 2003. "Guarding the commons: how community managed software projects protect their work," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1179-1198, July.
- Egon Franck & Carola Jungwirth, 2002. "Reconciling investors and donators - The governance structure of open source," Working Papers 0008, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Andreas Freytag & Sebastian von Engelhardt, 2010. "Institutions, Culture, and Open Source," Jena Economic Research Papers 2010-010, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics.
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