IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iso/wpaper/0008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reconciling investors and donators - The governance structure of open source

Author

Listed:
  • Egon Franck
  • Carola Jungwirth

    (Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich
    Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich)

Abstract

Software developed and produced in open source projects has become an important competitor in the software industry. Since it can be downloaded for free and no wages are paid to developers, the open source endeavor seems to rest on voluntary contributions by hobbyists. In the discussion of this puzzle two basic patterns of argumentation stand out. In what we call investor approaches, emphasis is put on the fact that although no wages are paid to contributors, other pay-offs may turn their effort into a profitable investment. In what we call donator approaches the point is made that many people contribute to open source projects without expecting to ever receive any individual rewards. We argue that the basic institutional innovation in open source has been the crafting of a governance structure, which enables investment without crowding out donations. The focus of the presented analysis lies on the specific institutional mechanisms, by which the open source governance structure achieves to reconcile the interests of investors and donators.

Suggested Citation

  • 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).
    • Handle: RePEc:iso:wpaper:0008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    2. Alessandro Rossi & Alessandro Narduzzo, 2003. "Modular design and the development of complex artifact lesson fron free open source software," Quaderni DISA 080, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 29 Sep 2003.
    3. Paul Laat, 2007. "Governance of open source software: state of the art," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 11(2), pages 165-177, May.
    4. Alessandro Narduzzo & Alessandro Rossi, 2003. "Modular Design and the Development of Complex Artifacts: Lessons from Free/Open Source Software," ROCK Working Papers 021, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 12 Jun 2008.
    5. M. Markus, 2007. "The governance of free/open source software projects: monolithic, multidimensional, or configurational?," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 11(2), pages 151-163, May.
    6. Egon Franck, 2010. "Private Firm, Public Corporation or Member’s Association Governance Structures in European Football," International Journal of Sport Finance, Fitness Information Technology, vol. 5(2), pages 108-127, May.
    7. Egon Franck & Carola Jungwirth & Benno Luthiger, 2005. "Motivation und Engagement beim OSS-Programmieren- Eine empirische Analyse," Working Papers 0036, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).
    8. Frank, Ulrich & Strecker, Stefan & Koch, Stefan, 2007. ""Open Model" - ein Vorschlag für ein Forschungsprogramm der Wirtschaftsinformatik: Langfassung," ICB Research Reports 8, University Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Computer Science and Business Information Systems (ICB).
    9. Blecker, Thorsten & Abdelkafi, Nizar & Raasch, Christina, 2008. "Enabling and sustaining collaborative innovation," Working Papers 52, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute for Technology and Innovation Management.
    10. Maria Alessandra Rossi, 2004. "Decoding the "Free/Open Source(F/OSS) Software Puzzle" a survey of theoretical and empirical contributions," Department of Economics University of Siena 424, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    11. Margit Osterloh & Sandra Rota, 2005. "Open Source software development ? just another case of collective invention?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2005-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    12. Georg von Krogh & Eric von Hippel, 2006. "The Promise of Research on Open Source Software," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 975-983, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iso:wpaper:0008. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: IBW IT (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isuzhch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.