[Commons-Law] Joel West's compilation of Free/Open Source Research

Thu Feb 11 21:04:15 IST 2010

Dear all,
Here's an interesting compilation of articles:

http://blog.openinnovation.net/2010/02/accessing-canon-of-open-source-research.html

- First [#FOSS2010][1] postings by [many.][2] -

I’m here at the [FOSS 2010][3] workshop hosted by UC Irvine, in a room 
full of academics talking about the future of open source research in 
hopes of shaping NSF funding of same.

Host [Walt Scacchi][4]asked for a show of hands: about 30 of the 40 
people in the room are academics, and most of them are either from 
computer science or information science/information schools. There were 
only five of us “other” academics (i.e. social scientists) — and three 
of us were on the SBE (Social, Behavioral & Economic) panel.

So one of the things that’s clear is that even though the room 
represents hundreds of open source conference and journal papers, few of 
them have read any of the social science research on open source.

As a starting point, I thought I’d put together a canon of open source 
research — along the lines of [my earlier canon of open/user innovation 
research][5] (most people in the room have never heard of open 
innovation, Chesbrough, von Hippel or even Bayh-Dole)

**1. Special Issues**
*   *Research Policy* ([June 2003][6]) special issue on Open Source 
Software Development, edited by Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh
*   *Management Science* ([July 2006][7]) special issue on Open Source 
Software, edited by Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh

  [1]: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23foss2010
  [2]: http://blog.openitstrategies.com/search/label/FOSS%202010
  [3]: http://foss2010.isr.uci.edu/
  [4]: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/
  [5]: http://blog.openinnovation.net/2009/11/influential-ouci-research.html
  [6]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5835-2003-999679992-440506
  [7]: http://mansci.journal.informs.org/content/vol52/issue7/index.dtl

**2. MIT Repository**
Karim Lakhani created [a repository][8] of open source working papers at 
MIT — 655 and counting. It’s not comprehensive (e.g., only 3 of my 11 
distinct [papers on OSS][9] are there). However, it does give a sense of 
the names and the themes that have been covered.

**3. Google**
In this world of Google-enabled everything, it would be possible to just 
search in Google Scholar for open source papers published in [business 
and economics][10] or [social sciences][11] (e.g. sociology, 
anthropology).

Because Google lists things in order of citations, this has the value of 
also listing some of the most-cited papers. Four of the top 20 come from 
the *Research Policy* special issue:
*   Guido Hertel, Sven Niedner and Stefanie Herrmann, 2003, “Motivation 
of software developers in open source projects: an Internet-based survey 
of contributors to the Linux kernel,” Research Policy 32 (7), 1159-177.
*   Georg von Krogh, Sebastian Spaeth, and Karim R. Lakhani, 2003. 
“Community, joining, and specialization in open source software 
innovation: a case study,” Research Policy 32 (7), 1217-1241.
*   Andrea Bonaccorsi and Cristina Rossi, 2003. “Why Open Source 
software can succeed," Research Policy 32 (7), 1243-1258.
*   Joel West, 2003, “How open is open enough? Melding proprietary and 
open source platform strategies,” Research Policy 32 (7), 1259-1285.

  [8]: http://opensource.mit.edu/online_papers.php
  [9]: http://www.joelwest.org/Research/OpenSource.html
  [10]: 
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=100&as_epq=open+source&as_subj=bus
  [11]: 
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=100&as_epq=open+source&as_subj=soc

Other oft-cited articles include:

*   Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, 2002. “Some Simple Economics of Open 
Source,” Journal of Industrial Economics, 52 (2), 197-234.
*   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), 209-223.
*   Karim R. Lakhani and Eric von Hippel, 2003, “How Open Source 
Software Works: “Free” User-to-User Assistance,” Research Policy 32 (6), 
923-943.
*   Bruce Kogut and Anca Metiu, 2000, “Open-source software development 
and distributed innovation,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 17 (2), 
248-264.

(It turns out Siobhan & I cited most of these papers in [our 2008 
paper,][12] so I was able to get the formatted cites from that since 
Google Scholar doesn’t produce MLA/APA cites.)

I make no claims that this is a complete list. It’s impossible to make a 
list of all the “good” papers, but I hope this provides a starting point 
for someone who doesn’t know about this large body of social science 
research, specifically those coming from a computer science or 
information systems perspectives. (As such, I left out CS/IS oriented 
venues such as the [6th annual][13] International Conference on Open 
Source Systems, sponsored by IFIP 2.13, as well as the pending JAIS 
[special issue][14] on open source software).

  [12]: 
http://blog.openitstrategies.com/2008/07/sponsored-open-source-communities.html
  [13]: http://oss2010.org/
  [14]: http://www.cl-mueller.de/wordpress/?p=247

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283

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