Open Source Software Development and Organizations
Frank Nagle, Juliane Wissel, Michael A. Zaggl, Hila Lifshitz‐Assaf, Maha Shaikh, Prasanna B. Tambe, Sirui Wang · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2019
Open source software (OSS) development has become increasingly popular among companies. Examples even include former opponents of OSS such as Microsoft. The active involvement of companies in OSS development leads to a growing overlap between OSS communities and companies. Different organizational forms, cultures, norms, ideologies, and practices all come in contact with each other. For example, the voluntary character of OSS contributions and the ideal of free sharing in OSS communities may complicate business activities of companies. This presenter symposium is motivated by several questions stemming from or related to the overlap between firms involved in OSS development and OSS communities or individual OSS developers. It brings together several scholars studying different aspects of company-involved OSS development and the intersection between communities and companies. The papers to be presented in the symposium focus on both companies (i.e., organizations) as well as individual software developers as the unit of analysis. By focusing on individual software developers, we tackle questions regarding the relationship between software developers’ work at their jobs and their (voluntary) activities in online communities (Paper presentation 1); as well as the characteristics of so-called star developers, especially their connection to community and company (Paper presentation 2). By focusing on the company as the unit of analysis, we look at the organizational conditions and challenges in order to comfort collaboration between companies and communities (Paper presentation 3); and the hybridity of organizations (Paper presentation 4).