Developing 'FLOSS', a Market Driven Investment

Abstract

Over the last few years, FLOSS (“Free Libre Open Source Software”) has become a commercially viable reality of the first order. It is viewed as an extreme case of open innovation, and thus of a laboratory for analysing innovation production in Internet based/knowledge based industries. A increasing number of companies are getting involved in the communities of development and scholars have analysed FLOSS communities and product as a complementary asset for firms. The question is thus to understand how firms right tune their level of investment in FLOSS production and communities to support their business, but without over give back its intellectual production to potential competitors. In this article, we debate this question, defending the idea that this involvement can be of different intensity, from complementary to specific asset, and that this intensity depends of the market of the firm. To do so, we surveyed francophone companies (France, Belgium, Switzerland) affirming a utilization of FLOSS in their commercial activity. Based on roughly 500 companies concerned, we obtained 141 usable responses and, via a cluster analysis (hierarchical ascendant classification, HAC) we statistically verified a link between FLOSS commercial strategies and degree of involvement into communities. This AHC produces a typology of commercial strategies, with differences in involvement, we explain.