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How Firms Adapt and Interact in Open Source Ecosystems: Analyzing Stakeholder Influence and Collaboration Patterns

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Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (REFSQ 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9619))

Abstract

[Context and motivation] Ecosystems developed as Open Source Software (OSS) are considered to be highly innovative and reactive to new market trends due to their openness and wide-ranging contributor base. Participation in OSS often implies opening up of the software development process and exposure towards new stakeholders. [Question/Problem] Firms considering to engage in such an environment should carefully consider potential opportunities and challenges upfront. The openness may lead to higher innovation potential but also to frictional losses for engaged firms. Further, as an ecosystem progresses, power structures and influence on feature selection may fluctuate accordingly. [Principal ideas/results] We analyze the Apache Hadoop ecosystem in a quantitative longitudinal case study to investigate changing stakeholder influence and collaboration patterns. Further, we investigate how its innovation and time-to-market evolve at the same time. [Contribution] Findings show collaborations between and influence shifting among rivaling and non-competing firms. Network analysis proves valuable on how an awareness of past, present and emerging stakeholders, in regards to power structure and collaborations may be created. Furthermore, the ecosystem’s innovation and time-to-market show strong variations among the release history. Indications were also found that these characteristics are influenced by the way how stakeholders collaborate with each other.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partly funded by the SRC in the SYNERGIES project, Dnr 621-2012-5354, and BMBF grant 01IS14026B.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Johan Linåker & Björn Regnell

  2. Technische Universität Ilmenau, Ilmenau, Germany

    Patrick Rempel & Patrick Mäder

Authors
  1. Johan Linåker
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  2. Patrick Rempel
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  3. Björn Regnell
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  4. Patrick Mäder
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Correspondence to Johan Linåker .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Maya Daneva

  2. Universidad Politècnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Oscar Pastor

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Linåker, J., Rempel, P., Regnell, B., Mäder, P. (2016). How Firms Adapt and Interact in Open Source Ecosystems: Analyzing Stakeholder Influence and Collaboration Patterns. In: Daneva, M., Pastor, O. (eds) Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality. REFSQ 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9619. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30282-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30282-9_5

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