Doing the Impossible: Managing Open Source Communities
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The document discusses the challenges and strategies involved in managing open source communities, emphasizing the importance of balancing openness with control. It outlines motivations for individual and corporate contributions to open source projects, and highlights the benefits of community engagement for companies. Best practices from case studies of IBM and Nokia illustrate effective community building and the implications of corporate involvement in open source development.
Doing the Impossible: Managing Open Source Communities
- 1. Doing the Impossible: Managing Open Source Communities Dr. Matthias Stürmer Senior Advisor, Ernst & Young June 7, 2011
- 2. Short Bio Matthias Stürmer ● Senior Advisor at Ernst & Young EMEIA Financial Services since 2010 ● Before at Swiss open source software provider Liip ● Dr. sc. ETH Zürich at the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation of ETH Zürich, thesis on firm involvement in open source communities ● Business administration and computer science at Ernst & Young University of Bern Belpstrasse 23 3001 Bern Switzerland ● Founder and secretary of the Swiss National matthias.stuermer@ch.ey.com Parliamentarian Group for Digital Sustainability Mobile: +41 58 289 61 97 ● Member of the Board of Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 3. Agenda 1. Forking today 2. Motivation and the private-collective model of innovation 3. Benefits and best practices of corporate community building 4. Balancing act between openness and control 5. Little surprise... Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 4. Forking today OpenOffice.org LibreOffice Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 5. Forking today Drizzle MySQL MariaDB Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 6. Forking today Compiere Adempiere Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 7. Forking today Nagios Icinga Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 8. Forking today Are these all failed open source projects? Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 9. Forking today No, the core team just didn't manage well its community. Forking is the community‘s Sword of Damocles. Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 10. Agenda 1. Forking today 2. Motivation and the private-collective model of innovation 3. Benefits and best practices of corporate community building 4. Balancing act between openness and control 5. Little surprise... Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 11. Like every country, every open source community is unique Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 12. Motivation for individuals to contribute 10 different reasons for individuals to contribute to open source software: Intrinsic Motivation: ● Ideology Can be enjoyment- ● Altruism or obligation-based incentives ● Kinship ● Fun Internalized Extrinsic Motivation: ● Reputation Can be non-monetary... ● Reciprocity ● Learning ● Own-use Source: G. F. von Krogh, Extrinsic Motivation: ● Career S. Haefliger, S. Spaeth, M. W. Wallin “Open Source ... or monetary incentives ● Pay Software: a Review of Motivations to Contribute” Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 13. Firms adopting the open source model Building a firm-sponsored community by Level 3 renouncing some of the project's control Revealing proprietary source code under an Level 2 open source license → full control by the firm Integrating externally available open Level 1 source software → open innovation Source: Matthias Stuermer 2009 PhD Thesis “How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation” Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 14. Motivation for firms to contribute 7 different reasons for firms to contribute to open source software: Level 2: Legal constraints ● GPL demands contributions forced contributions Level 3: Business benefits ● Low knowledge protection costs voluntary contributions ● Learning effects for the organization ● Reputation gain ● Lower costs of innovation ● Lower manufacturing costs ● Faster time to market Source: Matthias Stuermer, Sebastian Spaeth, Georg von Krogh 2009 "Extending private-collective innovation: a case study" Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 15. Theory to explain firm contributions Rivalry proprietary software yes no yes private good club good Excludability no commons public good open source software Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 16. Theory to explain firm contributions 1. Private investment model ● Appropriation of financial returns from innovations through IPRs → patents, copyright, licenses, trade secrets ● Knowledge spillover reduces innovator's benefits 2. Collective innovation model ● Investments in public goods → non-rival, non-excludable ● Free riding problem → public funding, governments 3. Private-collective model of innovation ● Innovators privately fund creation of public goods ● Example: production of open source software by firms Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 17. Private-collective model of innovation ● Free knowledge sharing ● Explains conditions when innovators receive rewards from private investments in public good innovations ● Rewards from process of innovation surpasses rewards of free-riders → involvement in innovation process ● Process-related rewards are larger than process-related costs → public good innovation ● What are such rewards or incentives? Sources: Eric von Hippel, Georg von Krogh 2003 “Open Source Software and the Private- Collective Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science” Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh 2006 “Free revealing and the private- collective model for innovation incentives” Georg von Krogh 2008 “Researching the Private-Collective Innovation Model” Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 18. Agenda 1. Forking today 2. Motivation and the private-collective model of innovation 3. Benefits and best practices of corporate community building 4. Balancing act between openness and control 5. Little surprise... Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 19. Why do managers want a community? Benefits for open source project leaders having an active community: ● Free feature development ● Free extension development ● Free testing ● Free bug reporting ● Free bug fixing ● Free customer support ● Free documentation ● Free marketing ● etc. Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 20. Best practices in corporate community building Two examples: Eclipse by IBM Maemo by Nokia Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 21. Evidence from the Eclipse case Key benefits for IBM: 1. COCOMO: external contributions of 21.5 million LOC by 2007 ~ 214,000 man-months ~ 1.7 billion USD 2. Standard-setting in Java IDE, beating competitor Sun 3. Strategic platform for IBM software solutions: basis for proprietary applications Source: Sebastian Spaeth, Matthias Stuermer, Georg von Krogh 2010 "Enabling knowledge creation through outsiders: towards a push model of open innovation" Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 22. What did IBM do? 1. Preemptive generosity ● Revealing of initial Eclipse source code by IBM 2. Continuous commitment ● Constant number of IBM programmers in Eclipse ● Constant level of participation in newsgroups 3. Adaptive governance structures (giving up control) ● Non-profit foundation with equal membership of firms 4. Lowering barriers to entry ● Sub-projects by non-IBM people; modular architecture Source: Sebastian Spaeth, Matthias Stuermer, Georg von Krogh 2010 "Enabling knowledge creation through outsiders: towards a push model of open innovation" Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 23. Nokia's (past) open source community building ● 2003: product decision for Nokia 770 tablet ● 2007: successor devices N800 and N810 ● June 2009: Nokia partners with Intel for Maemo ● August 2009: Maemo shall supersede Symbian as smartphone platform ● October 2009: Nokia releases smartphone N900 ● March 2010: Nokia Maemo and Intel Moblin become MeeGo ● March 2011: Nokia partners with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7... (for strategic reasons) Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 24. What did Nokia do? Source: Matthias Stuermer, Sebastian Spaeth, Georg von Krogh 2009 "Extending private-collective innovation: a case study" Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 25. What did Nokia do? Source: Matthias Stuermer, Sebastian Spaeth, Georg von Krogh 2009 "Extending private-collective innovation: a case study" Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 26. Agenda 1. Forking today 2. Motivation and the private-collective model of innovation 3. Benefits and best practices of corporate community building 4. Balancing act between openness and control 5. Little surprise... Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 27. Control of open source projects Community-driven open source projects ● Meritocracy: “exercise of control on the basis of knowledge” * ● Technical contributions and organizational-building behavior lead to authority and control ** Firm-driven open source projects ● Why do firms want control? ● Business model: value creation and value appropriation ● Firms need control to appropriate returns of investment ● Balancing act between openness and control Sources: * Max Weber 1978 “Economy and society” ** Siobhán O'Mahony and Fabrizio Ferraro 2007 The emergence of governance in an open source community Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 28. Firms influencing open source projects Corporations influence open source projects when... ● firms reveal previously proprietary code. ● firms contribute code. ● firms control release management. ● firms employ core developers who previously contributed as unpaid volunteers. ● firms contract intermediary OSS firms and individuals. Firm-driven open source projects face challenges such as.. ● lack of external contributions. (issue 1) ● possible crowding-out effects of intrinsic motivation. (issue 2) Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 29. Issue 1: Balancing act between openness and control Control decreases contributions * ● Transparency increases contributions strongly ** ● Accessibility increases contributions slightly ** Balancing is difficult ● Too much control: communities may not contribute with all of their energy, interest, and creativity ● Too little control: results may not serve the firm's goals Sources: * Sonali Shah 2006 “Motivation, governance, and the viability of hybrid forms in open source software development”; Dahlander and Magnusson 2005 “Relationships between open source software companies and communities: observations from Nordic firms” ** Georg von Krogh, Sebastian Spaeth, Matthias Stuermer, Guido Henkel 2009 “The Credible Sponsor: Participants’ Motivation and Organization Attributes in Collaborative Digital Innovation Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 30. Issue 1: Effect of control on motivation Perceived firm attributes Individual Identification, Motivation, and Contribution ⊘ Source: Georg von Krogh, Sebastian Spaeth, Matthias Stuermer, Guido Henkel 2009 “The Credible Sponsor: Participants’ Motivation and Organization Attributes in Collaborative Digital Innovation Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 31. Issue 2: Crowding-out of intrinsic motivation Source: Matthias Stürmer, LinuxTag 2007 Berlin http://www.slideshare.net/nice/crowding-effects-how-money-influences-open-source-projects-and-its-contributors Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 32. Agenda 1. Forking today 2. Motivation and the private-collective model of innovation 3. Benefits and best practices of corporate community building 4. Balancing act between openness and control 5. Little surprise... Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young
- 33. Ernst & Young's new publication on open source ● For your clients: Why and how to professionally use open source software ● Content: ● Benefits, risks and good practices ● Professional application of open source software ● Legal aspects of open source ● Background information on open source software P DF o n line end 1 of J une 201 Matthias Stürmer, Ernst & Young