What to Share, When, and Where: Balancing the Objectives and Complexities of Open Source Software Contributions

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Possible founder application

A practical decision framework for open-core licensing, project selection, community investment, competitive disclosure, and deciding whether to seed or join an OSS ecosystem.

Reported result

What the study found

The study identifies 12 contribution objectives and 15 complexities. Objectives include reputation, supplier/partner/competitor management, and exploiting external knowledge; complexities include loss of control, competitive disadvantage, negative exposure, contribution cost, and choosing a new versus existing community.

Research question

What the authors investigated

What objectives and complexities do organizations balance when deciding what software to open-source, when to share it, and whether to create or join a community?

Design

Multiple-case study of three organizations; two research cycles; semi-structured practitioner interviews analyzed with inductive iterative qualitative coding.

Sample and setting

Three case organizations and 20 practitioners.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

Only three organizations and qualitative interview evidence; findings are context-sensitive and do not estimate causal effects or market returns.

Research sources

Fetched Springer open-access publisher page establishes title, authors, DOI, venue, year and complete abstract with design, sample, findings, and conclusions. Firecrawl research job 01a1436c-f86b-77df-af1c-9a2f87e3535e returned this citation and metadata.