[Air-l] 8 new papers + book on opensource.mit.edu

Fri May 7 15:59:12 PDT 2004

Hello All,

We now have over 150 submissions on our website (exact count = 157).  Congratulations to the whole community for contributing your early ideas and thoughts and making this endeavor worthwhile.

Below you will find the details on the new papers.  Thanks to all the authors for their submissions

Also Michael Wechner has been very kind to have implemented search functionality on the website.  He has set up a trial link here http://mit.oscom.org/ - Please go beat it up and if you like it we can integrate it into the main site.  Many thanks to Michael!

Ciao for now!!!

Karim R. Lakhani
MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group
Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224
http://spoudaiospaizen.net
http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu 

Paper 1
Author:
Ciffolilli, Andrea
Title:
The Economics of Open Source Hijacking and Declining Quality of Digital Information Resources: A Case for Copyleft
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/ciffolili.pdf
Abstract:
The economics of information goods suggest the need of institutional intervention to address the problem of revenue extraction from investments in resources characterized by high fixed costs of production and low marginal costs of reproduction and distribution. Solutions to the appropriation issue, such as copyright, are supposed to guarantee an incentive for innovative activities at the price of few vices marring their rationale. In the case of digital information resources, apart from conventional inefficiencies, copyright shows an extra vice since it might be used perversely as a tool to hijack and privatise collectively provided open source and open content knowledge assemblages. Whilst the impact of hijacking on open source software development may be uncertain or uneven, some risks are clear in the case of open content works. The paper presents some evidence of malicious effects of hijacking in the Internet search market by discussing the case of The Open Directory Pro
ject. Furthermore, it calls for a wider use of novel institutional remedies such as copyleft and Creative Commons licensing, built upon the paradigm of copyright customisation.

Paper 2
Author:
Dahlander, Linus
Title:
Appropriating the Commons: Firms in Open Source Software
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/dahlander2.pdf
Abstract:
Firms in open source software (OSS) are active in a field encompassing all the characteristics of a public good, given the non-excludability and non-rivalry nature of OSS. As the case of OSS demonstrates, the fact that many important inputs to the innovative process are public should not be taken to mean that innovators are prevented from capturing private returns. The objective of this paper is to explore how firms appropriate returns from innovations that are created outside the boundaries of firms and in the public domain using the case of OSS. To do so, the paper draws upon an explorative multiple case study of six small firms that attempt to appropriate returns from OSS, with rich empirical evidence from various data sources. The cases illustrate how firms try a variety of approaches to appropriate adequate returns and that selling services seem to be the dominant trend. Firm also balance the relative inefficiency of traditional means of intellectual property right such
 as patents by putting greater emphasis on first mover advantages and creating network externalities.

Paper 3
Author
Rossi, Maria Alessandra
Title:
Decoding the "Free/Open Source (F/OSS) Puzzle" - a Survey ofTheretical and Empirical Contributions
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/rossi.pdf
Abstract:
F/OSS software has been described by many as a puzzle. In the past five years, it has stimulated the curiosity of scholars in a variety of fields, including economics, law, psychology, anthropology and computer science, so that the number of contributions on the subject has increased exponentially. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of our understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The exercise suggests that what is puzzling about F/OSS is not so much the fact that people freely contribute to a good they make available to all, but rather the complexity of its institutional structure and its ability to organizationally evolve over time.

Paper 4
Author:
Stewart, Daniel
Title:
Status Inertia:The Speed Imperative in the Attainment of Community Status
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/stewart2.pdf
Abstract:
This paper examines the role of tenure in establishing social status within an online community of free software developers. As tenure increases, an actor's status becomes increasingly taken-for-granted, thus making it difficult for actors to generate mobility outside of their current social strata. The results of empirical analyses suggest that the broader community plays a major role in deciding one's social position-a judgment that can be made fairly quickly and decisively. Therefore, members of the community who desire high status should work quickly to establish a positive reputation or else run the risk of being cast into an inert low status social position.

Paper 5
Author
Stewart, Daniel
Title:
Social Forces and Constraint in the Attainment of Community Status
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/stewart1.pdf
Abstract:
A study of social forces at work within an online community of free software developers, this paper investigates the manner in which social forces exert pressure that initially shapes and defines an actor's status within the community, but eventually constrain that actor's movement within a status order. The results of empirical analyses at the dyad level show that, in the process of status attainment, community members tend to evaluate a focal actor's reputation according to publicly available social cues. Ironically, these same social cues eventually work to produce stability and constraint in an actor's status position by reducing heterogeneity in community status beliefs.

Paper 6
Author:
Blanas, George
Title:
SOS-ware [Strategic Open Software] Perspectives
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/blanas2.pdf
Abstract:
Certain types of software play a strategic role in the development of the various aspects of organizational life. One of these roles is knowledge development that can act as a facilitator of economic diamonds. We review the characteristics of strategic software and we try to answer the question whether there can exist open software development that would be able to incorporate these characteristics. Based on this review, and on certain case studies, we present a theory, on how open software might be able to close the gaps in knowledge creation and usage - or the reverse, ie. to become a vehicle for an acceleration of this hysteresis.

Paper 7
Author:
Blanas, George
Title:
SOS-ware DEVILS[Strategic Open Software DEVelopment ILlnesseS]
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/blanas1.pdf
Abstract
Certain categories of software play a strategic role in contemporary public and private organizations. While software use is accelerated and diffused to more and more people and organisations, software development follows a reverse trend where fewer players form oligopolies, with some of them having almost reached a state of monopoly in certain areas. The evil consequences of such an evolution can be numerous, some of them relate to economic and security dependence and some others to phenomena of knowledge dependence and hysteresis. Within the current paper, we formulate a general framework that categorises the types of illnesses in open strategic software development from a number of viewpoints and the types of damages that could be inflicted to organizations and states as a result of false expectations if these illnesses persist. Finally, we identify the areas where research is considered to be urgently needed.

Paper 8
Authors:
Lee, Jen-Fang & Tzu-Ying Chan
Title:
Theory Development for Organizational Platform of User Collaboration Innovation Community
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/leechan2.pdf
Abstract:
This study proposes the concept of the “User Collaboration Innovation Community”, tries to understand this new phenomenon by conducting projects where the opening of source software is the subject of this analysis, borrows the observation variables and propositions adopted by Mintzberg on structures of the innovative organization, and summarizes the opinions of scholars of organizational economics, the relationship between property rights and organization performance. This study further infers a series of conceptual framework and propositions on the relationships among “organization structure, property right, and organization innovation” for “the organizational platform of the user collaboration innovation community”. We expect that the construction of this concept framework will function as a concrete description and presentation of the innovation model of the User Collaboration Innovation Community and will serve as a clear path to be followed for continuous research in th
e future.

Book
Gehring, Robert A & Bernd Lutterbeck
Title:
Open Source Jarbuch 2004 (in German)
http://www.think-ahead.org/
Abstract:
The "Open Source Jahrbuch 2004" (open source yearbook 2004) is the first publication in German to cover the topic with an interdisciplinary approach. In contains contributions from practitioners as well as from scientists and aims to supply the reader with a comprehensive picture of how rich the open source phenomenon is. Open source means much more than only software. The subtitle of the book, "Zwischen Softwareentwicklung und Gesellschaftsmodell", i.e. "Between Software Development and Social Model", circumscribes the reach of this new way of dealing with information artefacts. The book is directed towards decision-makers from both politics and business as well as to scientists doing reasearch in this field. It delivers first-hand insights as a basis for understanding the potentials and constraints of open source.

-- 
Karim R. Lakhani
MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group
Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224
http://spoudaiospaizen.net
http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu 

-- 
Karim R. Lakhani
MIT Sloan | The Boston Consulting Group
Mobile: +1 (617) 851-1224
http://spoudaiospaizen.net
http://web.mit.edu/lakhani/www | http://opensource.mit.edu 