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Why do companies create and how do they succeed with a vendor-led open source foundation

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Abstract

Vendor-led open source foundations are open source foundations led by software vendors rather than individual developers or end-user organizations. Our research investigates why vendors create or join such foundations, and how these foundations succeed. We conducted exploratory single-case study research, with the LF Edge foundation as our case. We collected qualitative data in the form of interviews and text documents, and performed qualitative data analysis for building our theory. We identified 18 motives of vendors’ participation in vendor-led open source foundations regarding four aspects: revenue, competition, productivity and innovation, and reputation. To understand how vendor-led open source foundations succeed, we investigated good practices followed by LF Edge applied as preventions for potential problems or solutions for encountered problems. We determined 52 good practices in 20 different contexts, focusing on three dimensions: governance, efficiency and productivity, and sustainability.

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Data Availability

In this research, we used two types of data: interview transcripts and publicly available documents. Interview transcripts are not shared to preserve our interview partners’ privacy. However, we share the interview protocol in Appendix A to ensure transparency. We present the list of documents we analyzed with their access links in Appendix B, the codebook we created during our analysis in Appendix C, and the list of code segments supporting our results in Appendix D. Appendices of this study are accessible from this link: https://faubox.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/getlink/fiUGvjNoXvGJ8acKJDfBMt/

Notes

  1. https://www.cncf.io/projects/kubernetes/

  2. https://www.maxqda.com

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Acknowledgements

We thank our interview partners for their valuable time and insights. We also thank Andreas Kaufmann, Julia Mucha, and Georg Schwarz for their invaluable feedback. This research has been supported with the fundings by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The project number of the fund is 506460878 and GZ:RI 2147/11-1.

Funding

This research has been supported with the fundings by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). The project number of the fund is 506460878 and GZ:RI 2147/11–1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Elçin Yenişen Yavuz & Dirk Riehle

  2. Erlangen, Germany

    Ankita Mehrotra

Authors
  1. Elçin Yenişen Yavuz
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  2. Dirk Riehle
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  3. Ankita Mehrotra
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Correspondence to Elçin Yenişen Yavuz.

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All authors certify that they have no affiliations with the investigated case involving the LF Edge foundation, and the Linux Foundation.

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Communicated by: Klaas-Jan Stol

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Yenişen Yavuz, E., Riehle, D. & Mehrotra, A. Why do companies create and how do they succeed with a vendor-led open source foundation. Empir Software Eng 30, 40 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-024-10588-9

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