Relationships between Open Source Software Companies and Communities
Research paper: Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms. By Linus Dahlander, Mats G. Magnusson. Research Policy 34 (2005) 481–493
Introduction
Research Questions
"In firms, the relationships between developers and their employers are regulated by contracts. Consequently, these developers employed by firms receive salary and other types of financial compensation. In OSS projects, anyone is free to join and the relations are informal. Whereas firm-based software creation is normally restricted to relations within the firm, OSS developers are not bound to firms but are dispersed in all parts of the world. The use of communities created or induced by management appears to be a balancing act, where the influence from the firm’s side, in terms of the degree of control and the strategic direction that is imposed, is a key issue. With too much control it is questionable whether it will be possible to generate the energy, interest and creativity that is at the core of “naturally” emerged communities.With too little control and direction, however, the effects for the firm may be small, or even counterproductive, in case the community’s goals work against the organization. This ought to be even more pronounced in the case of OSS, as management of the firm has no formal influence over the community based on their standing in the firm, and the overall value of openness and sharing prevalent within OSS is apparently conflicting with the firms’ ambitions to generate profit.
This apparent management challenge has
directed our study to a number of research questions focusing
on the inter-relationship between the firms and
the communities, the first one of which is as follows:
Research question 1: What different approaches exist to handle OSS firm–community relationships?
The inter-relationship between OSS firms and communities seems to comprise a set of tensions and inconsistencies in terms of goals, norms and values, potentially leading to different managerial issues. This leads us to the second research question.
Research question 2: What managerial challenges do OSS firms encounter in their community-related activities?"