Open Source Production Research Articles

An interactive reading environment for online scholarly journals

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a set of reader‐oriented tools developed as part of an open source journal production and access system.Design/methodology/approachThe paper outlines key elements of the reading tools component of Open Journal Systems (OJS). A design rationale is provided, and related to the key elements of the system. The philosophy behind the development of the reading tools is described, and relevant published research in support of the design is presented.FindingsOJS (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) is a web‐based, open source editing, management, and production application designed for publication of scholarly journals online. The reading tools developed for OJS are a useful addition to the feature set of OJS, providing journal readers with a richer reading environment, promote active reading, and increase the level of critical engagement with journal article content.Practical implicationsReaders may find that the tools described, as well as the larger system of which they are a part, could be usefully adopted in their own institutional context.Originality/valueThis paper provides an introduction to the design philosophy behind a reader‐oriented set of tools that will be of interest to those engaged in online reading research, and information interaction design. It will also be of value to those interested in open access, as well as those interested in open source software development.

Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving

Crowdsourcing is an online, distributed problem-solving and production model that has emerged in recent years. Notable examples of the model include Threadless, iStockphoto, InnoCentive, the Goldcorp Challenge, and user-generated advertising contests. This article provides an introduction to crowdsourcing, both its theoretical grounding and exemplar cases, taking care to distinguish crowdsourcing from open source production. This article also explores the possibilities for the model, its potential to exploit a crowd of innovators, and its potential for use beyond forprofit sectors. Finally, this article proposes an agenda for research into crowdsourcing.

The Penguin's Genome, or Coase and Open Source Biotechnology

Open source offers an interesting alternative to government control or private bargaining over rights to a commons. Open source production, however, will not occur on any significant scale absent certain conditions. Certain types of software have been developed effectively through open source methods because the projects were divisible and granular and the roots of the necessary social structure existed in early hacker communities and copyright license models were adaptable to support open source norms. Biotechnology, however, is different. The commons rhetoric often applied to open source software and the Internet fails to withstand scrutiny when applied to biologically based technologies. Information can no longer be defined as an independent entity that can be possessed equally by infinite users. Instead, information is context-dependent. This is particularly true of biologically-encoded information, which affects direct change in an organism. Under a context-dependent definition, there are economic, social, and biological aspects of rivalry connected to an resource. A truly open commons therefore is an unobtainable myth. Because is in some sense rivalrous, there must be some method of allocation. Collective management by way of open source development is appealing, but biotechnology lacks the sort of community that would make it feasible. In particular, the classical and neo-classical story of science as a homogenous, cooperative enterprise that is being corrupted by private property rights does not correspond to reality. Science, and in particular biotechnology, was and will be rife with competition and gamesmanship. Given these circumstances, a Coasian approach suggests that private property rights should lead to bargaining that will, over time, efficiently allocate the resources. Many of the transaction costs that have been identified as barriers to such bargaining should not pose insurmountable problems, particularly as players repeatedly interact over the same or similar resources. The most difficult aspect of transaction costs is that of the search costs entailed in defining and clearing multiple rights held by diverse parties under differing intellectual property regimes. If search costs are a primary barrier to bargaining, the primary aim of biotechnology innovation policy should be to reduce those costs. One way this could be accomplished is to establish a national technology database containing about proprietary claims, license terms, and license prices. Although this solution would not be perfect, it represents a means of reducing barriers to biotechnology innovation consistent with existing norms.

SCO What? Rhetoric, Law, and the Future of F/OSS Production

Using litigation between The SCO Group and IBM as an example, this essay relates the rhetoric that drives open-source software as a social movement to legal issues open-source production faces. The essay argues that social movement rhetoric creates noise that makes legal issues more difficult to understand and resolve. The tension between social movement noise and legal signal may become more acute and more important as F/OSS projects continue to make inroads in commercial space, where IP litigation is a way of life. The community's reaction to the SCO/IBM litigation suggests it needs to adapt community expectations and production procedures to this environment. The essay concludes with thoughts on issues the F/OSS community may wish to consider in connection with drafting version 3 of the General Public License. These issues include: What is the GPL?; whose GPL is it?; and how many GPL's are there? Each question has a seemingly obvious answer which, on consideration, presents interesting legal issues.

Adaptive Entry Strategies under Dominant Standards - Hybrid Business Models in the Open Source Software Industry

During the '60s and the '70s, basically all software was Open Source and everyone was allowed to copy, modify and redistribute computer programs. When software ceased to be hardware-specific and the diffusion of computers took off, firms started to produce software independently from hardware and to protect their code through intellectual property rights. At present, a turnaround is taking place: the Open Source production mode is spreading across the software industry and, in some cases, it performs even better than the traditional proprietary one. Although a growing body of literature is analyzing Open Source software (OSS) issues, there is still lack of empirical data on the phenomenon, and little is known about firms that enter the software industry by producing under the Open Source license scheme (Open Source firms). This paper is a contribution to fill this gap and focuses on the business models of these firms. We find significant heterogeneity among them, in particular many agents supply both proprietary and Open Source software. We present a model of adoption that studies the intra-firm diffusion of the new paradigm. Explanatory hypotheses are discussed analyzing how the characteristics of the Open Source production mode and of network externalities in software demand shape the strategies of firms that entered the OSS field.