Abstracts
Abstract
Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) proposes an original way to solve the incentive dilemma for the production of information goods, based on von Hippel (1988)’s user-as-innovator principle: as users benefit from innovation, they have incentive to produce it, and as they can expect cumulative innovation on their own proposition, they have incentive to share it. But what is the incentive for producers when they are not users? We discuss this question via a qualitative study of FLOSS projects in “algorithm-based industries”. We find that in this case producers hardly participate in such projects.
Keywords:
- Knowledge economics,
- sociology,
- open source,
- science,
- standardization
Résumé
Le logiciel libre, ou open source propose une façon originale de résoudre le dilemme de l’incitation à la production de biens informationnels, basé sur le principe proposé par von Hippel (1988) de l’utilisateur comme innovateur: parce que les utilisateurs bénéficient de l’innovation, ils ont intérêt à la produire, et comme ils peuvent s’attendre à de l’innovation cumulative sur leur propre proposition, ils ont intérêt à la partager. Mais que se passe-t-il dans ces communautés si les producteurs ne sont pas les utilisateurs? Nous discutons cette question grâce à une étude qualitative de projets de open-source dans le secteur des « algorithmes ». Nous constatons que dans ce cas les producteurs ne participent guère à ces projets.
Mots-clés :
- Économie de la connaissance,
- sociologie,
- open source,
- science,
- standardisation
Resumen
El software libre (en inglés FLOSS, Free, Libre, Open Source Software), propone una forma única para resolver el dilema de los incentivos para producir bienes de información, basándose en el principio del usuario como innovador de Von Hippel (1998): conforme los usuarios se benefician de la innovación, tienen incentivos para producirla, y puesto que pueden esperar una acumulación de innovación sobre su propia aportación, también tienen incentivo para compartirla. Pero, ¿cuál es el incentivo para los productores cuando no son ellos los usuarios? Discutimos esta pregunta a través de un estudio cualitativo de proyectos FLOSS en “industrias basadas en algoritmos”. Descubrimos que, en este* caso, los productores rara vez participan en dichos proyectos. Economía del conocimiento, sociología, software libre, código abierto, ciencia, estandardización.
Palabras clave:
- Economía del conocimiento,
- sociología,
- software libre,
- código abierto,
- ciencia,
- estandardización
Appendices
Bibliography
- Anderson, John B. (2005). Digital Transmission Engineering. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Second Edition.
- Arthur, W. B. (1989). Competing technologies: an overview. In Dosi, G.; Freeman, C.; Nelson, R.; Silverberg, J.; Soete, L., editors, Technical Change and Economic Theory, pages 590–607. Frances Pinter, London.
- Balka, Kerstin; Raasch, Christina; Herstatt, Cornelius (2009). Open source enters the world of atoms: A statistical analysis of open design. First Monday, 14(11).
- Beaud, Stéphane (1996). L’usage de l’entretien en sciences sociales. plaidoyer pour l’”entretien ethnographique”. Politix, 9(35): 226–257.
- Beaud, Stéphane; Weber, Florence (2003). Guide de l’enquête de terrain: produire et analyser des données ethnographiques. La Découverte, Paris.
- Bertaux, Daniel (2010). Le récit de vie. L’enquête et ses méthodes. col. 128, Armand-Colin, 3 edition.
- Bessen, James (2005). Open Source Software: Free Provision of Complex Public Goods. Technical report, Research on Innovation. URL: http://www.researchoninnovation.org/opensrc.pdf.
- Blanchet, Alain; Gotman, Anne (2010). L’enquête et ses méthodes. col. 128, Armand-Colin, 2 edition.
- Bonaccorsi, Andrea; Rossi Lamastra, Cristina (2002). Why Open Source Software Can Succeed. LEM working paper, (2002/15).
- Clément-Fontaine, Mélanie (2002). Les licences libres. analyse juridique. In (Jullien et al., 2002),, editor, Nouveaux modèles économiques, nouvelle économie du logiciel, pages 163–177.
- Clément-Fontaine, Mélanie (2009). L’oeuvre libre. Juris-classeur PLA, fasc 1975.
- Cohen, M. D.; March, J. G.; Olsen, J. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1): 1–25.
- Crowston, Kevin (2011). Lessons from volunteering and free/libre open source software development for the future of work. Turku, Finland. Springer. URL: http://crowston.syr.edu/system/files/ifipwg82paper_final.pdf.
- Crowston, Kevin; Fagnot, Isabelle (2008). The motivational arc of massive virtual collaboration. The IFIP WG 9.5 Working Conference on Virtuality and Society: massive Virtual Communities, Lüneberg, Germany (2008).
- Crowston, Kevin; Howison, James; Annabi, Hala (2006). Success in free and open source software development: Theory and measures. Software Process Improvement and Practice, 11: 123–148.
- Dang Nguyen, Godefroy; Genthon, Christian (2006). Les perspectives du secteur des Tic en Europe (Perspectives for the European ICT Industry). Marsouin Working Paper, (4-2006).
- DeLone, W. H.; McLean, Ephraim R. (1992). Information systems success: The quest for the dependent variable. Information Systems Research, 3(1): 60–95.
- DeLone, W. H.; McLean, Ephraim R. (2002). Information systems success revisited. In Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Waikola, Hawaii. HICSS-35. URL: http://csd12.computed.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2002/1435/08/14350238.pdf.
- DeLone, W. H.; McLean, Ephraim R. (2003). The delone and mclean model of information systems success: a ten-year update. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(4): 9–30.
- Denzin, Norman K.; Lincoln, Yvonna S., editors (2011). The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 4 edition.
- Evan, W. M. (1964). The engineering technician: dilemmas of a marginal occupation, In Berger, P. L., editor, Human Dimensions of Work, Studies in the Sociology of Occupations, pages 36–63. Macmillan, New York.
- Farrell, J. (1989). Standardization and intellectual property. Jurimetrics Journal.
- Feller, J.; Fitzgerald, R.; Hissam, S.; Lakhani, R. K., editors (2005). Perspectives on free and open source software. MIT Press, New York.
- Flyvbjerg, Bent (2011). Case study. In (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011),, editor, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, chapter 17, pages 301–316.
- Foray, Dominique (2004). The Economics of Knowledge. MIT Press.
- Foray, Dominique; Cassier, Maurice (2001a). Économie de la connaissance: le rôle des consortiums de haute technologie dans la production de bien public. Économie et Prévision, 4/5(150-151): 107–122.
- Foray, Dominique; Cassier, Maurice (2001b). Public Knowledge, Private Property and the Economics of High-tech Consortia. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 11(2): 123–132.
- Foray, Dominique; Zimmermann, Jean-Benoît (2001). L’économie du logiciel libre: organisation coopérative et incitation à l’innovation. Revue économique, 52: 77–93. Special Issue, hors série : économie d’Internet, sous la direction d’É. Brousseau et N. Curien.
- Forte, A.; Bruckman, A. (2005). Why do people write for Wikipedia? Incentives to contribute to open-content publishing. working paper.
- Hackman, J. R. (1987). The design of work teams, In Lorsch, J. W., editor, Handbook of Organizational Behavior, pages 315–342. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
- Hemetsberger, Andrea; Reinhardt, Christian (2009). Collective development in open-source communities: An activity theoretical perspective on successful online collaboration. Organization Studies, 30: 987–1008.
- Hess, Charlotte; Ostrom, Elinor (2006a). Introduction: An Overview of the Knowledge Commons. In (Hess and Ostrom, 2006b),, editor, Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. From Theory to Practice, pages 3–26.
- Hess, Charlotte; Ostrom, Elinor, editors (2006b). Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. From Theory to Practice. MIT Press.
- Hope, Janet (2008). Biobazaar: The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology. Haward University Press.
- Joly, P.B.; Hervieu, B. (2003). La marchandisation du vivant. Futuribles, (292).
- Jullien, Nicolas; Clément-Fontaine, Mélanie; Dalle, Jean-Michel (2002). Nouveaux modèles économiques, nouvelle économie du logiciel. Technical report, Projet RNTL, 218 pages. URL: http://www.marsouin.org/article.php3?id_article=78.
- Jullien, Nicolas; Roudaut, Karine; le Squin, Sandrine (2011). L’engagement dans des collectifs de production de connaissance en ligne. Le cas GeoRezo. Revue française de socio-économie, 8(2): 59–83.
- Katz, M. L.; Shapiro, C. (1985). Network externalities, competition, and compatibility. American Economic Review, 75: 3: 424–440.
- Kogut, B. M.; Metiu, A. (2001). Open source software development and distributed innovation. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 17(2): 248–264.
- Lacolley, Jean-Louis; Loilier, Thomas; Tellier, Albéric (2007). La prise de décision dans les équipes de la communauté des logiciels libres: Faut-il mettre le bazar dans la poubelle? In XVIe Conférence Internationale de Management Stratégique, Montréal.
- Lakhani, Karim; von Hippel, Eric (2003). How open source software works: Free user to user assistance. Research Policy, 32: 923–943. URL: http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/lakhanivonhippelusersupport.pdf.
- Lakhani, Karim; Wolf, R. (2005). Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects, in Feller et al. (2005) edition, pages 3–22.
- Lamy, Erwan; Shinn, Terry (2006). L’autonomie scientifique face à la mercantilisation. formes d’engagement entrepreneurial des chercheurs en france. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 4 (164): 23–50.
- Latour, B.; Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills.
- Lee, Sang-Yong Tom; Kim, Hee-Woong; Gupta, Sumeet (2009). Measuring open source software success. Omega, 37(2): 426–438.
- Lerner, J.; Tirole, J. (2002). Some simple economics of open source. Journal of Industrial Economics, 50: 197–234.
- Li, Qing; Heckman, Robert; Crowston, Kevin; Howison, James; Allen, Eileen E.; Eseryel, U. Yeliz (2008). Decision making paths in self-organizing technology-mediated distributed teams. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Open Source Systems, Paris, France, 14-17 December.
- Lundvall, B.; Johnson, (1994). The learning economy. Journal of Industry Studies, 1(2): 23 – 42.
- Marwell, G.; Oliver, P. (1993). The Critical Mass in Collective Action: A Micro-Social Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Merriam-Webster, (2009). Online Dictionary. URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/.
- Miles, Matthew B; Huberman, A Michael (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An expanded Sourcebook, volume 2nd. Sage Publications.
- Mockus, A.; Fielding, R.T.; Herbsleb, J. D. (2000). A case study of open source software development: The apache server. pages 263–272, Limerick, Ireland. Proceedings of The International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’2000).
- Muselli, Laure (2004). Les licences informatiques. un instrument stratégique des éditeurs de logiciels. Réseaux, 3(125): 143–174.
- Nilges, Michael; Linge, P. Jens (2002). A definition of bioinformatics. In Offermanns, Stefan; Rosenthal, Walter, editors, Encyclopedia of molecular pharmacology. Springer Verlag. URL: http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/unites/Binfs/definition/bioinformatics_definition.html.
- Nov, Oded (2007). What motivates wikipedians? Communications of the ACM, 50: 60–64.
- O’Mahony, Siobhán (2003). Guarding the commons: how community managed software projects protect their work. Research Policy, 32(7): 1179–1198. Open Source Software Development.
- O’Mahony, Siobhán (2007). The governance of open source initiatives: what does it mean to be community managed? Journal of Management and Governance, 11(2): 139–150.
- O’Mahony, Siobhán; Bechky, Beth A. (2008). Boundary organizations: Enabling collaboration among unexpected allies. Administrative Science Quarterly, 53: 422–459.
- Scacchi, Walt (2007). Free/open source software development: recent research results and emerging opportunities. In ESEC-FSE companion 07: The 6th Joint Meeting on European software engineering conference and the ACM SIGSOFT symposium on the foundations of software engineering, pages 459–468, New York, NY, USA. ACM.
- Schweik, Charles M. (2006). Free/Open-Source Software as a Framework for Establishing Commons in Science. In (Hess and Ostrom, 2006b), editor, Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. From Theory to Practice.
- Seddon, P. B. (1997). A respecification and extension of the delone and mclean model of is success. Information Systems Research, 8(3): 240–253.
- Shah, Sonali K. (2006). Motivation, governance, and the viability of hybrid forms in open source software development. Management Science, 52(2): 1000–1014.
- Shapiro, C.; Varian, H. (1999). Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Harvard Business School Press.
- Short, Nicholas M. (2009). Remote sensing tutorial. Technical report. URL: http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
- Stake, Robert E. (2008). Case Study, (?) edition, pages 119–150.
- Stallman, Richard; al., (First publication 1992, this version, 2009). GNU Coding Standards. Free Software Foundation. URL: http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.pdf.
- von Hippel, Eric (1988). The Sources of Innovation. Oxford University Press, New York.
- von Hippel, Eric; von Krogh, George (2003). Open source software and the “private-collective” innovation model: Issues for organization science. Organization Science, 14(2): 209–223.
- Von Krogh, George; Spaeth, Sebastian; Lakhani, Karim R. (2003). Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: A case study. Research Policy, 32(7): 1217–1241.
- Wasko, Molly McLure; Faraj, Samer (2005). Why should i share? examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice. MIS Quarterly, 29(1): 35–57.
- Yang, Heng-Li; Lai, Cheng-Yu (2010). Motivations of wikipedia content contributors. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6): 1377–1383. Online Interactivity: Role of Technology in Behavior Change.
- Yin, Robert K. (2009). Case study research: design and methods. SAGE, 4th edition.
- Zachte, E. (2007). Wikipedia statistics-tables-english. Technical report. URL: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm.
- Zhang, Xiaoquan; Zhu, Feng (2011). Group size and incentives to contribute: A natural experiment at chinese wikipedia. The American Economic Review, 101(4): 1601–1615.