The Governance of Open Source Software Communities

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the nature of the relationships between dimensions of governance in Open Source (OS) communities. A recent review highlighted this issue as critical. Furthermore, this issue has been recognized as strategic for managing the trade-off between innovation and standardization, the capacity of firms to profit from their investment in open source, and the sustainability of OS projects. Our results are based on a comparative analysis of 40 OS projects contained in the Freshmeat dataset. For each project, we collected data on the governance solutions implemented. Governance mechanisms have been ranked for their degree of openness. Our findings show that OS governance is configurational. Those configurations are defined along two dimensions: leadership and decision-making distribution, and reciprocity of the appropriability regime. Four configurations are indeed defined: open source, sponsored, reciprocity-based, and tolerant dictatorship. Those configurations have been defined based on an exploratory factor analysis.