The open source software phenomenon: Characteristics that promote research

Abstract

Since the turn of the century, open source software has triggered a vast volume of research. In this essay, based on a brief review of selected work, we show that research in many different fields and disciplines of the social sciences have shed light on the phenomenon. We argue that five characteristics make the phenomenon particularly attractive to examination from various fields and disciplines using a plethora of research methods: (1) impact: open source software has an extensive impact on the economy and society; (2) theoretical tension: the phenomenon deviates sharply from the predictions and explanations of existing theory in different fields; (3) transparency: open source software has offered researchers an unprecedented access to data; (4) communal reflexivity: the community of open source software developers frequently engage in a dialog on its functioning (it also has its own research community); (5) proximity: the innovation process in open source software resembles knowledge production in science (in many instances, open source software is an output of research processes). These five characteristics also promote a transdisciplinary research dialog. Based on the experience of open source software research, we propose that phenomena-driven transdisciplinary research provides an excellent context to promote greater dialog between disciplines and fields. Moreover, we propose that the recent diffusion of the open source software model of innovation to other areas than software calls for new research and that the field of information systems has an important role to play in this future research agenda.

Introduction

Open source software has two distinct features. First, open source software comes equipped with licenses that provide existing and future users the right to use, inspect, modify, and distribute modified and unmodified software to others (Raymond, 1999). With such open licenses, the software products aim at several market segments, covering operating systems, middleware, and end-user products, such as media players, office suites, and games. Over the last 15 years, many open source software products have made successful inroads into these segments attracting many millions of users. For example, in 2005, Apache achieved a 60% market share for web server software (Netcraft, 2007). In the same year, Firefox, the browser, achieved a 13% market share (Jano, 2006) and turned over more than 50 Million USD for the Mozilla foundation that markets and coordinates its development. Thus, business models around software development are changing and the deployment of open source solutions is a viable alternative for IT managers.

Second, while software can be classified as “open source” independently of how it was developed (it is sufficient for the software to be released with an open source license affixed), years of development have given rise to a new practice of innovation associated with open source software. Today, projects display a very distinct development process. Open source software projects are typically initiated by a “project leader” or “project entrepreneur.” Depending on their interest in the project, volunteers (or companies) join in and contribute to designing, writing, testing, debugging, distributing, and documenting the software. Depending on their knowledge, these voluntary “project contributors” perform tasks ranging from cheering, via administration and coordination, to technical development. Popular projects such as Linux or Azureus may receive the support of several thousand contributors who emerge from a much larger group of users. These contributors, in turn, provide feedback to the open source software developers, share their ideas, report software bugs, indicate new opportunities for using the software, etc. (Raymond, 1999, Lerner and Tirole, 2002, von Krogh and von Hippel, 2003). This highlights a change in the nature of how software architecture is created in an evolutionary manner rather than in a pure top-down planned style as advocated by many (e.g., Brooks, 1995).

Over the last decade, paralleling the growth in markets for open source software, studies of the open source software phenomenon have proliferated in the social sciences. Google Scholar lists more than a thousand papers using the keywords “open source software” and “social science.” In the social science citation index, out of 198 papers that have “open source software” registered as a keyword (717 when using just “open source”), roughly 75% have been published within the last 3 years. Several key journals in various fields have published special issues related to open source software, gathering focal contributions.

Research on open source software has surfaced in many disciplines and fields of the social sciences, ranging from economists over computer scientists to anthropologists, investigating various aspects of the phenomenon using a plethora of research methods. The field of information systems thrives on and contributes to “trans-disciplinary” research. According to Bob Galliers, the combination of technical, social, and human factors that impact on the performance of information systems requires an open and frequent exchange amongst researchers working in various areas and disciplines (Galliers, 2003). For the field of information systems, the open source phenomenon, thus, represents an unprecedented opportunity for such a trans-disciplinary dialog. One main question is (1) why the phenomenon has promoted this large amount of research and in the process (2) evoked the interest of researchers working in several disciplines and fields of the social science contributing to the field of information systems? This essay attempts to address these two questions by analyzing the open source phenomenon and proposes specific characteristics that promote extensive and trans-disciplinary research. The intention is to identify some “lessons learned” about the phenomenon and highlight new research opportunities. This is particularly important since the open source model of innovation is diffusing into other fields and industries including technical design, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, cultural goods, etc.

The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we briefly review three research streams and show that researchers from various fields and disciplines have contributed insights to these shared research questions. In Section 3, we analyze in more detail the open source software phenomenon and propose five characteristics that have led to the proliferation of multi-disciplinary research. These are impact, theoretical tension, transparency, communal reflexivity, and proximity. In Section 3.1, we conclude the paper with a call for new transdisciplinary research on information systems as it applies to the diffusion of the open source model of innovation to new fields.