Just pops into my mind whether there is any research or work done to model the behaviours in Open Source development. The behaviour of the
developers, users, buyers - actors involved. How to analyse and the basis for analysis
What do I mean by model? One concept that comes to mind immediately is Game Theory. Now, Game Theory is used to model how decisions are made to optimise the reward in a particular interaction. Of course this is very layman understanding. To apply the underlying mathematics is another thing.
So back to Open Source. It would be interesting to find such model being used to analyse the viabilty of the Open Source development model. It is definitely not be exact, but like all model, it tries to fit the parameters and predict outcome.
Some questions that might be elucidated are
- Why should a commercial entity pay for or support Open Source and not just use it for free? What are the incentives? How to quantify?
- Is Open Source viable or sustainable? What are the variables that is supporting it? And what are the variables that is pulling it apart?
- How to strike a balance? Where is this point? By balance I mean a point that benefits both the developer and the users.
Now I’m not looking for qualitative argument for and against. There are plenty of such on the net. What I have not seen (but suspect it exists) is quantitative work and modelling.
Hi Ken,
You may be interested in some of the work done by Siobhan O’Mahoney at Harvard Business School:
http://dor.hbs.edu/fi_redirect.jhtml?facInfo=pub&facEmId=somahony&loc=extn
She has done extensive research on different open source communities and the dynamics of how they behave. I met her when she was doing some research on the Eclipse Foundation, a project I’ve been involved with over the last few years.
Thanks for the pointer!