Papers
Topics
Authors
Recent
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Gemini 2.5 Flash
119 tokens/sec
GPT-4o
56 tokens/sec
Gemini 2.5 Pro Pro
43 tokens/sec
o3 Pro
6 tokens/sec
GPT-4.1 Pro
47 tokens/sec
DeepSeek R1 via Azure Pro
28 tokens/sec
2000 character limit reached

Systematic Literature Review of Commercial Participation in Open Source Software (2405.16880v1)

Published 27 May 2024 in cs.SE

Abstract: Open source software (OSS) has been playing a fundamental role in not only information technology but also our social lives. Attracted by various advantages of OSS, increasing commercial companies take extensive participation in open source development and have had a broad impact. This paper provides a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of existing research on company participation in OSS. We collected 92 papers and organized them based on their research topics, which cover three main directions, i.e., participation motivation, contribution model, and impact on OSS development. We found the explored motivations of companies are mainly from economic, technological, and social aspects. Existing studies categorize companies' contribution models in OSS projects mainly through their objectives and how they shape OSS communities. Researchers also explored how commercial participation affects OSS development. We conclude with research challenges and promising research directions on commercial participation in OSS. This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of commercial participation in OSS development.

Definition Search Book Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com
References (121)
  1. Mark Aberdour. 2007. Achieving quality in open-source software. IEEE software 24, 1 (2007), 58–64.
  2. OLIVER ALEXY and JOACHIM HENKEL. 2007. PROMOTING THE PENGUIN: WHO IS ADVOCATING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN COMMERCIAL SETTINGS? Academy of Management Proceedings 2007, 1 (2007), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2007.26530011 identifier: 10.5465/ambpp.2007.26530011.
  3. Why do commercial companies contribute to open source software? International Journal of Information Management 32, 2 (2012), 106–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2011.10.003
  4. Competitive strategy of proprietary software firms in an open source environment. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues 17, 1 (2020), 38–59.
  5. Challenges of Tracking and Documenting Open Source Dependencies in Products: A Case Study. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 25–35.
  6. Systematic review in software engineering. System engineering and computer science department COPPE/UFRJ, Technical Report ES 679, 05 (2005), 45.
  7. Benjamin Birkinbine. 2020. Incorporating the digital commons: Corporate involvement in free and open source software. University of Westminster Press.
  8. Business firms’ engagement in community projects. Empirical evidence and further developments of the research. In First International Workshop on Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development (FLOSS’07: ICSE Workshops 2007). IEEE, 13–13.
  9. Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi. 2004. Altruistic individuals, selfish firms? The structure of motivation in Open Source software. First Monday 9, 1 (2004). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v9i1.1113
  10. Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi. 2006. Comparing motivations of individual programmers and firms to take part in the open source movement: From community to business. Knowledge, Technology & Policy 18, 4 (2006), 40–64.
  11. On company contributions to community open source software projects. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 47, 7 (2019), 1381–1401.
  12. An investigation of work practices used by companies making contributions to established OSS projects. In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice. 201–210.
  13. A history of IBM’s open-source involvement and strategy. IBM systems journal 44, 2 (2005), 249–257.
  14. From ”community” to ”commercial” FLOSS: the case of Moodle. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Research and Development (Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Free/Libre/Open Source Software Research and Development). ACM, Cape Town, South Africa, 11–16.
  15. An empirical study on the relationship between software design quality, development effort and governance in open source projects. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 34, 6 (2008), 765–782.
  16. Firms’ involvement in Open Source projects: A trade-off between software structural quality and popularity. Journal of Systems and Software 84, 1 (2011), 144–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2010.09.004
  17. Open innovation and within-industry diversification in small and medium enterprises: The case of open source software firms. Research Policy 43, 5 (2014), 891–902.
  18. A case study of the collaborative approaches to sustain open source business models. In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Open Collaboration). ACM, Hong Kong, China, 1–3.
  19. Riehle D. 2021. The Open Source Distributor Business Model. Computer 54, 12 (2021), 99–103. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2021.3112318 Computer Computer.
  20. Carlo Daffara. 2007. Business models in FLOSS-based companies. In Workshop presentatioon at the 3rd Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS 2007).
  21. Linus Dahlander and Mats Magnusson. 2008a. How do firms make use of open source communities? Long range planning 41, 6 (2008), 629–649.
  22. Linus Dahlander and Mats Magnusson. 2008b. How do Firms Make Use of Open Source Communities? Long Range Planning 41, 6 (2008), 629–649.
  23. Linus Dahlander and Mats G Magnusson. 2005. Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms. Research policy 34, 4 (2005), 481–493.
  24. When cultures clash: Participation in open source communities and its implications for organizational commitment. ICIS (2011).
  25. The Impact of Ideology Misfit on Open Source Software Communities and Companies. MIS quarterly 42, 4 (2018), 1069. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2018/14242
  26. Who drives company-owned OSS projects: internal or external members? Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society 24, 1 (2018), 1–17.
  27. Exploring the effect of software ecosystem health on the financial performance of the open source companies. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Software Health. 48–55.
  28. Nicholas Economides and Evangelos Katsamakas. 2006. Two-Sided Competition of Proprietary vs. Open Source Technology Platforms and the Implications for the Software Industry. Management Science 52, 7 (2006), 1057–1071. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1060.0549 identifier: 10.1287/mnsc.1060.0549.
  29. Daniel Ehls. 2017. Open source project collapse–sources and patterns of failure. (2017).
  30. Motivations of Individuals and Firms Participating in Open Source Community. In 2005 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (2005 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Vol. 1). IEEE, 309–314.
  31. From peer production to productization: A study of socially enabled business exchanges in open source service networks. Information Systems Research 19, 4 (2008), 475–493.
  32. Industrial experience with open source software process management. In 2016 IEEE 40th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Vol. 2. IEEE, 180–185.
  33. Brian Fitzgerald. 2006. The transformation of open source software. MIS quarterly (2006), 587–598.
  34. Collectivism, creativity, competition, and control in open source software development: reflections on the emergent governance of the SPDX® working group. International Journal of Information Systems and Management 1, 1-2 (2014), 125–145.
  35. Making open source project health transparent. Computer 54, 8 (2021), 104–111.
  36. Understanding how companies interact with free software communities. IEEE software 30, 5 (2013), 38–45.
  37. Jesus M Gonzalez-Barahona and Gregorio Robles. 2013. Trends in free, libre, open source software communities: From volunteers to companies. it–Information Technology it–Information Technology 55, 5 (2013), 173–180.
  38. Marc Gruber and Joachim Henkel. 2006. New ventures based on open innovation–an empirical analysis of start-up firms in embedded Linux. International Journal of Technology Management 33, 4 (2006), 356–372.
  39. Rules of Engagement: Why and How Companies Participate in OSS. arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.08266 (2023).
  40. The Long Road Ahead: Ongoing Challenges in Contributing to Large OSS Organizations and What to Do. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CSCW2 (2021), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479551 identifier: 10.1145/3479551.
  41. A case study of a corporate open source development model. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering (Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering). ACM, Shanghai, China, 472–481.
  42. Nikolay Harutyunyan. 2020. Managing your open source supply chain-why and how? Computer 53, 6 (2020), 77–81.
  43. Surveying industrial roles in open source software development. OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT, ADOPTION AND INNOVATION, Vol. 234. Springer.
  44. O. Hauge and S. Ziemer. 2009. Providing Commercial Open Source Software: Lessons Learned. OPEN SOURCE ECOSYSTEMS-DIVERSE COMMUNITIES INTERACTING, Vol. 299. Springer.
  45. Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh. 2003. Open source software and the “private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science. Organization science 14, 2 (2003), 209–223.
  46. Shuk Ying Ho and Arun Rai. 2017. Continued Voluntary Participation Intention in Firm-Participating Open Source Software Projects. Information Systems Research 28, 3 (2017), 603–625. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2016.0687 identifier: 10.1287/isre.2016.0687.
  47. Dirk Homscheid and Mario Schaarschmidt. 2016. Between organization and community: investigating turnover intention factors of firm-sponsored open source software developers. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science (Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science). ACM, Hannover, Germany, 336–337.
  48. Martin Höst and Alma Oručević-Alagić. 2011. A systematic review of research on open source software in commercial software product development. Information and Software Technology 53, 6 (2011), 616–624. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2010.12.009
  49. West J. and O’Mahony S. 2005. Contrasting Community Building in Sponsored and Community Founded Open Source Projects. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE, 2005. (Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE, 2005.). IEEE, 196c–196c.
  50. ”Cool” or ”monster”?: company takeovers and their effect on open source community participation. In Proceedings of the 2011 iConference (Proceedings of the 2011 iConference). ACM, Seattle, Washington, USA, 327–331.
  51. B. A. Kitchenham and S. Charters. 2007. Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering. (2007).
  52. Andrew M St Laurent. 2004. Understanding open source and free software licensing: guide to navigating licensing issues in existing & new software. ” O’Reilly Media, Inc.”.
  53. Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole. 2001. The open source movement: Key research questions. European economic review 45, 4-6 (2001), 819–826.
  54. François Letellier. 2008. Open source software: the role of nonprofits in federating business and innovation ecosystems. AFTE 2008 (2008).
  55. How firms adapt and interact in open source ecosystems: analyzing stakeholder influence and collaboration patterns. In International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. Springer, 63–81.
  56. Beyond the Business Model: Incentives for Organizations to Publish Software Source Code. OPEN SOURCE ECOSYSTEMS-DIVERSE COMMUNITIES INTERACTING, Vol. 299. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg.
  57. Georg JP Link and Debora Jeske. 2017. Understanding organization and open source community relations through the attraction-selection-attrition model. In Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Open Collaboration. 1–8.
  58. G. J. P. Link and S. Qureshi. 2017. The role of open source in new business formation: Innovations for development, Vol. 2017-August. Americas Conference on Information Systems.
  59. Gastón Llanes and Ramiro de Elejalde. 2013. Industry equilibrium with open-source and proprietary firms. International Journal of Industrial Organization 31, 1 (2013), 36–49.
  60. Perceptions and Uptake of Open Source in Swedish Organisations. In IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, E. Damiani, B. Fitzgerald, W. Scacchi, M. Scotto, and G. Succi (Eds.). IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Vol. 203. Springer US, Boston, MA, 155–163.
  61. Open source in Swedish companies: where are we? Information Systems Journal 20, 6 (2010), 519–535.
  62. Aberdour M. 2007. Achieving Quality in Open-Source Software. IEEE Software 24, 1 (2007), 58–64. https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2007.2
  63. Adoption of open source software in organizations: A socio-cognitive perspective. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 21, 4 (2012), 257–273.
  64. Lorraine Morgan and Patrick Finnegan. 2014. Beyond free software: An exploration of the business value of strategic open source. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems 23, 3 (2014), 226–238.
  65. Khaireddine Mouakhar and Albéric Tellier. 2017. How do Open Source software companies respond to institutional pressures? A business model perspective. Journal of Enterprise Information Management 30, 4 (2017), 534–554.
  66. The adoption of open source software in business models: a Red Hat and IBM case study. In Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. ACM, 112–121.
  67. Olivia B Newton and Stephen M Fiore. 2023. Leveraging Corporate Engagement for Diversity in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Projects. (2023).
  68. Impact of stakeholder type and collaboration on issue resolution time in oss projects. In IFIP International conference on open source systems. Springer, 1–16.
  69. Coopetition of Software Firms in Open Source Software Ecosystems. Vol. 304. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 146–160.
  70. ‘Open source has won and lost the war’: Legitimising commercial–communal hybridisation in a FOSS project. New Media & Society 23, 5 (2021), 1157–1180. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820907022
  71. Margit Osterloh and Sandra Rota. 2007. Open source software development—Just another case of collective invention? Research Policy 36, 2 (2007), 157–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2006.10.004
  72. Trust and commerce in open source–a contradiction? na.
  73. Siobhán O’Mahony. 2007. The governance of open source initiatives: what does it mean to be community managed? Journal of Management & Governance 11 (2007), 139–150.
  74. The coproduction of open source software by volunteers and big tech firms. News and Media Research Centre.
  75. E. S. Raymond. 2001. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. The cathedral and the bazaar - musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revoltionary (rev. ed.).
  76. Dirk Riehle. 2007. The economic motivation of open source software: Stakeholder perspectives. Computer 40, 4 (2007), 25–32.
  77. D. Riehle. 2009. The Commercial Open Source Business Model. VALUE CREATION IN E-BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, Vol. 36. Springer.
  78. Dirk Riehle. 2012. The single-vendor commercial open course business model. Information Systems and e-Business Management 10 (2012), 5–17.
  79. Dirk Riehle. 2019. The innovations of open source. Computer 52, 4 (2019), 59–63.
  80. Dirk Riehle. 2020. Single-vendor open source firms. Computer 53, 4 (2020), 68–72.
  81. Corporate involvement of libre software: Study of presence in Debian code over time. OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT, ADOPTION AND INNOVATION, Vol. 234. Springer US, Boston, MA. Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation.
  82. Self-organization patterns in wasp and open source communities. IEEE Intelligent Systems 21, 2 (2006), 36–40. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.34
  83. Deconstructing the Nature of Collaboration in Organizations Open Source Software Development: The Impact of Developer and Task Characteristics. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 48, 10 (2021), 3969–3987.
  84. Mario Schaarschmidt and Klaas-Jan Stol. 2018. Company soldiers and gone-natives: role conflict and career ambition among firm-employed open source developers. (2018).
  85. Mario Schaarschmidt and Harald Von Kortzfleisch. 2015. Firms’ Resource Deployment and Project Leadership in Open Source Software Development. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management 12, 02 (2015), 1550010. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219877015500108 identifier: 10.1142/S0219877015500108.
  86. How do firms influence open source software communities? A framework and empirical analysis of different governance modes. Information and Organization 25, 2 (2015), 99–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infoandorg.2015.03.001
  87. Open source software success: Measures and analysis. Decision Support Systems 52, 2 (2012), 364–372.
  88. A business model for commercial open source software: A systematic literature review. Information and Software Technology 103 (2018), 202–214. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2018.06.018
  89. Methodological problems in determining the basic features of the sample set controlling the activities of the enterprise. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 6, 3 S4 (2015), 261.
  90. Zeena Spijkerman and Slinger Jansen. 2018. The open source software business model blueprint: A comparative analysis of 10 open source companies.. In SiBW (SiBW). 128–143.
  91. Richard Stallman. 2003. Free software foundation (fsf). In Encyclopedia of Computer Science. 732–733.
  92. Wouter Stam. 2009. When does community participation enhance the performance of open source software companies? Research Policy 38, 8 (2009), 1288–1299.
  93. A systematic literature review on the barriers faced by newcomers to open source software projects. Information and Software Technology 59 (2015), 67–85.
  94. Impacts of License Choice and Organizational Sponsorship on User Interest and Development Activity in Open Source Software Projects. Information Systems Research 17, 2 (2006), 126–144. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.1060.0082 identifier: 10.1287/isre.1060.0082.
  95. Katherine J. Stewart and Sanjay Gosain. 2006. The Impact of Ideology on Effectiveness in Open Source Software Development Teams. MIS quarterly 30, 2 (2006), 291–314. https://doi.org/10.2307/25148732
  96. Terutaka Tansho and Tetsuo Noda. 2015. Utilization and development contribution of open source software in Japanese IT companies: an exploratory study of the effect on business growth (2nd report based on 2014 survey). In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Open Collaboration). Association for Computing Machinery, San Francisco, California, Article 3.
  97. Snarby Terje. 2013. Collaboration Patterns among Commercial Firms in Community-Based OSS Projects. Master’s thesis. Institutt for datateknikk og informasjonsvitenskap.
  98. Commodification of industrial software: A case for open source. IEEE software 26, 4 (2009), 77–83.
  99. Georg Von Krogh and Eric Von Hippel. 2006. The promise of research on open source software. Management science 52, 7 (2006), 975–983.
  100. The impact of commercial organizations on volunteer participation in an online community. In Academy of Management Annual Meeting. 1–40.
  101. The business of open source. Commun. ACM 51, 4 (2008), 41–46.
  102. Michael Weiss. 2018. Business of Open Source: A Case Study of Integrating Existing Patterns Through Narratives. In Proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (Proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs). ACM, Irsee, Germany, 1–4.
  103. Joel West. 2003. How open is open enough? Research Policy 32, 7 (2003), 1259–1285.
  104. Joel West and Scott Gallagher. 2006a. Challenges of open innovation: the paradox of firm investment in open-source software. R and D Management 36, 3 (2006), 319–331. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00436.x identifier: 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2006.00436.x.
  105. Joel West and Scott Gallagher. 2006b. Challenges of open innovation: the paradox of firm investment in open-source software. R&d Management 36, 3 (2006), 319–331.
  106. J West and S O’Mahony. 2008. Designing a participation architecture to support firm-community collaboration. Industry and Innovation 15, 2 (2008), 145–168.
  107. Sam Williams. 2010. Free as in freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the free software revolution. Free Software Foundation Boston.
  108. Claes Wohlin. 2014. Guidelines for snowballing in systematic literature studies and a replication in software engineering. In Proceedings of the 18th international conference on evaluation and assessment in software engineering. 1–10.
  109. Poster: Companies’ Domination in FLOSS Development - An Empirical Study of OpenStack. In 2018 IEEE/ACM 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion (ICSE-Companion) (2018 IEEE/ACM 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion (ICSE-Companion)). Association for Computing Machinery, Gothenburg, Sweden, 440–441.
  110. A survey on deep learning for software engineering. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 54, 10s (2022), 1–73.
  111. Yiqing Yu. 2020. Role of reciprocity in firms’ open source strategies. Baltic Journal of Management 15, 5 (2020), 797–815.
  112. Commercial participation in OpenStack: Two sides of a coin. Computer 55, 2 (2022), 78–84.
  113. Turnover of companies in OpenStack: Prevalence and rationale. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 31, 4 (2022), 1–24.
  114. Corporate dominance in open source ecosystems: a case study of OpenStack. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (Proceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering). Association for Computing Machinery, Singapore, Singapore, 1048–1060.
  115. Companies’ domination in FLOSS development: an empirical study of OpenStack. In Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceeedings. ACM, 440–441.
  116. Companies’ participation in oss development–an empirical study of openstack. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 47, 10 (2019), 2242–2259.
  117. How do companies collaborate in open source ecosystems? an empirical study of openstack. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering. 1196–1208.
  118. How Commercial Organizations Participate in OpenStack Open Source Projects. Journal of Software 28, 6 (2017), 1343–1356.
  119. Inflow and Retention in OSS Communities with Commercial Involvement. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology 25, 2 (2016), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/2876443 identifier: 10.1145/2876443.
  120. Inflow and retention in oss communities with commercial involvement: A case study of three hybrid projects. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 25, 2 (2016), 13.
  121. Pär J. Ågerfalk and Brian Fitzgerald. 2008. Outsourcing to an Unknown Workforce: Exploring Opensurcing as a Global Sourcing Strategy. MIS quarterly 32, 2 (2008), 385–409. https://doi.org/10.2307/25148845
User Edit Pencil Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com
Authors (6)
  1. Yuxia Zhang (12 papers)
  2. Cailean Osborne (10 papers)
  3. Minghui Zhou (17 papers)
  4. Zhi Jin (160 papers)
  5. Hui Liu (481 papers)
  6. XueTao Li (6 papers)
Citations (5)

Summary

We haven't generated a summary for this paper yet.

X Twitter Logo Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com