The article reviews the book “Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy,” by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian.

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

Selective revealing in open innovation processes: The case of embedded Linux

Open source software (OSS) is a social and economic phenomenon that raises fundamental questions about the motivations of contributors to information systems development. Some developers are unpaid volunteers who seek to solve their own technical problems, while others create OSS as part of their employment contract. For the past 10 years, a substantial amount of academic work has theorized about and empirically examined developer motivations. We review this work and suggest considering motivation in terms of the values of the social practice in which developers participate. Based on the social philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we construct a theoretical framework that expands our assumptions about individual motivation to include the idea of a long-term, value-informed quest beyond short-term rewards. This motivation-practice framework depicts how the social practice and its supporting institutions mediate between individual motivation and outcome. The framework contains three theoretical conjectures that seek to explain how collectively elaborated standards of excellence prompt developers to produce high-quality software, change institutions, and sustain OSS development. From the framework, we derive six concrete propositions and suggest a new research agenda on motivation in OSS.

/pdf/carrots-and-rainbows-motivation-and-social-practice-in-open-23r7nyejcq.pdf

Carrots and rainbows: motivation and social practice in open source software development

Rise of strategic nets — New modes of value creation

Crowd science: The organization of scientific research in open collaborative projects

Does Open Source (OS) represent a new innovation model, and under what conditions can it be employed in other than the software development context? OS is a term for software published under licence that does not give any private intellectual property rights to the developers. They invest private resources in inventions that are then fed into a common pool by contributing to a public good. A look into history shows that OS isn't a unique example of an innovation model which Allen called 'collective invention' (Allen 1983). In the second half of the nineteenth century iron-making companies in Britain's Cleveland district willingly shared their innovations in blast furnace design (Allen 1983). Other examples include the enhancement of steam engine design after 1800 (Nuvolari 2002) and the search for a dominant design in the flat panel display industry (Spencer 2003). Even though OS shares many similarities with these other cases of collective invention, there are two major differences. Firstly, collective invention regimes rarely seem to survive after the development of a dominant design (see e.g. Meyer 2002). In OS, this problem is solved with the institutional innovation of OS licences. Rather than just giving up their intellectual property rights, OS developers use these licenses to ensure that their innovations remain common property for all times (O'Mahony 2003). Secondly, the problem of enforcing the rules of cooperation established in these licenses is solved in a rather informal, decentralised way. Enforcing the rules of cooperation establishes a public good of a second order (Elster 1989). In the Open Source context, the contribution to the second order public good can only be explained by the presence of a sufficient number of norm-based intrinsically motivated contributors who are willing to carry the private costs of rule enforcement. We show that the governance mechanisms used in OS projects are especially well suited not to crowd out this special kind of motivation. We conclude that OS differentiates itself from other cases of collective invention by its success in solving the second order social dilemma of rule development and enforcement, which depends on institutional as well as motivational factors.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=561744

Open Source Software Development - Just Another Case of Collective Invention?

http://crema-research.ch/papers/2005-08.pdf

Open source software production is a successful new innovation model which disproves that only private ownership of intellectual property rights fosters innovations. It is analyzed here under which conditions the open source model may be successful in general. We show that a complex interplay of situational, motivational, and institu- tional factors have to be taken into account to understand how to manage the 'tragedy of the commons' as well as the 'tragedy of the anticommons'. It is argued that the success of this new innovation model is greatly facilitated by a well balanced port- folio of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, low costs for contributors and governance mechanisms that do not crowd out intrinsic motivation.

http://www.crema-research.ch/papers/2005-11.pdf

Trust and Community in Open Source Software Production

Teams erfreuen sich in Unternehmungen wachsender Beliebtheit (vgl. z.B. DeMatteo et al. 1998, Dulebohn und Martocchio 1998, Lawler et al. 1995, Capelli und Rogovsky 1994). Die Grunde fur diese Entwicklung sind vielfaltig. Johnson fand in einer Befragung von 35 amerikanischen Unternehmungen heraus, dass als Hauptgrunde fur die Einfuhrung von Arbeitsgruppen die Hoffnung auf erhohte Produktqualitat, Steigerung der Kundenzufriedenheit, hohere Produktivitat und Zunahme des ‘team spirit’ in den Unternehmungen genannt werden (Johnson 1993). Gleichzeitig und als Folge davon nimmt der Einsatz auf Gruppenleistungen basierender Lohnsysteme auf Kosten individueller Leistungslohne zu (vgl. Peck 1993). Dies kommt daher, dass die Bestimmung der individuellen Leistungsinputs mit steigender Interdependenz der Aufgaben zunehmend auf Schwierigkeiten stosst (vgl. z.B. Nickel und O’Neal 1990, Patten 1977). Gruppenentlohnung wird zudem die Eigenschaft zugeschrieben, Kooperation und die Entwicklung von ‘team spirit’ zu fordern (DeMatteo 1998).

Sandra Rota

Papers

Open Source Software Development - Just Another Case of Collective Invention?

Open Source Software Development - Just Another Case of Collective Invention?

Trust and Community in Open Source Software Production

Fairnessnormen und Anreize in Teams

Trust and Community in Open Source Software Production