A PROBLEM-SOLVING PERSPECTIVE ON GOVERNANCE AND PRODUCT DESIGN IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES AND EXPLORATORY EVIDENCE
Mario Schaarschmidt, Gianfranco Walsh, Alan MacCormack, Harald F. O. von Kortzfleisch · 2013
Previous research shows that organization architecture relates to the architecture of a product under development, and recent studies compare proprietary versus open source software (OSS) as examples of integrated and distributed forms of software development, respectively. This study goes a step further to investigate the correspondence of organization and product architectures by comparing single-vendor with community OSS. Using a problem-solving perspective, the authors seek to explain when and why vendor firms use a community to solve their problems. Furthermore, the combination of literature-based insights with field interviews supports an exploration of the assumption that single-vendor OSS exhibits a less modular product architecture than community OSS. With design structure matrices, this study analyzes differences in software code architecture and specifies the studied relationship.