This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world’s largest incubator of open source software activity. We explore the hypothesis that the...

The empirical studies relative to the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) case stress the important role played by psychological and social motivations. However, the theories elaborated to cope with this dimension, such as gift economyʺ, epistemic communityʺ or community of practiceʺ, are...

In this paper, we open up the black box that has been the introduction of open practices into firms’ commercial R&D strategies. Most of the existing research on the phenomenon of open innovation focuses on its interorganizational aspects. In contrast, the effect that the opening of boundaries...

In this paper, I describe and analyze the phenomenon of informal development collaborationbetween firms in the field of embedded Linux, a type of open source software. Toexplain the observed phenomenon of voluntary revealing, I develop a duopoly model ofquality competition. The central...

The link between firms engaging in open source software (OSS) development and the OSScommunity is established by individual developers. This linkage might entail a principalagentissue due to the developer’s double allegiance to firm and OSS community, and exposethe firm to the risk of losing...

This paper provides a quantitative study (N = 268) of patterns of free revealing offirm-developed innovations within embedded Linux, a type of open source software (OSS). Ifind that firms, without being obliged to do so, contribute many of their own developmentsback to public embedded Linux...

Network externalities spur the growth of networks and the adoption of network goods intwo ways. First, they make it attractive to join a network with a large installed base.Second, they make it attractive for network members to actively recruit new members.Despite indications that this “peer...