How Does the Collaboration Between the FLOSS Community and Corporations Happen
* Article: Hybrid Innovation: How Does the Collaboration Between the FLOSS Community and Corporations Happen? By Yuwei Lin. 'Knowledge, Technology and Policy' summer 2005
Abstract
Unlike innovation based on a strong professional culture involving close collaborationbetween professionals in academia and/or corporations, the current Free/Libre OpenSource Software (FLOSS) development entails a global knowledge network, whichconsists of 1) a heterogeneous community of individuals and organisations who do notnecessarily have professional backgrounds in computer science but competent skills tounderstand programming and working in a public domain; 2) corporations. This paperhighlights the importance of the hybrid form of developing and implementing software,and also identifies several key factors shaping the collaboration between OSS firms andthe community.
Summary
From the reading notes of Michel Bauwens, 2006:
A study of how FLOSS and open source companies cooperate.
Yuwei Lin
- stresses the open nature of the ecosystem
- that OS companies have hybrid cultures but they do set priorities and deadlines
OS companies and the wider FLOSS community cooperate continuously around a mode of mutual help.
Areas of cooperation are:
- 1) bugs reporting anad patches contributing: $3b of hours go into Linux upgrades, excluding applications
- 2) social networking: an open process of innovation across corporate boundaries
- 3) identity building: the community provides 'technological socialization' and 'socio-technical identity': people identify each other by the projects they are working on (and no longer by their company names)
- 4) licensing: is used to bind communities and companies together
FLOSS developers acquire a hybrid identity, obtaining monetary and institutional support from the companies and social capital and technical support from the community; in the former they have to take into account profit and customers demands, but in the community, they can experiment.
Yuwei Lin stresses that community-centered innovation is more dynamic than firm-based ones, as the latter do not want to jeopardize existing markets with new products