Peer production and open source projects are collaborative means of product creation, typically referring to electronic tasks. The collaborators are members of self-organizing communities that outline individual goals for adaptations to a universal core product. Peer production is the term for the collaborative means of creating a product that stems from multiple members of a community, with goals for a shared outcome.
On the other hand, “open source” typically refers to the electronic project that is worked upon under peer production development. An open source project “shares its source code for free, giving programmers everywhere permission to [alter] it.” (15, Hyatt) In a world of increasing dependence on technology, innovation is vital for development of useful products. There are many aspects of peer production and open source that have been examined, from attempting to understand why it can be successful to researching what limitations may exist.
The articles under examination for the paper that accompanies this post include an interview and three research articles. The interview is between Josh Hyatt, from the MIT Sloan Management Review, and Marten Mickos, senior vice president at Sun. In the interview, they discuss aspects of open source projects from a managing perspective, which is a different view from the majority of those involved in open source software development. The first research article is about innovation models and how to define what type of innovation open source and peer production is considered to be. The authors define a new model from the preexisting models, “private-collective” innovation, where developers use their own resources to privately invest in the creation of code that will then be freely revealed to the public. From there, a research article on Chinese Wikipedia tries to explain the correlation between group size and willingness to contribute to open source projects. The main finding is that there is “a positive relationship between group size and contributors’ contribution levels.” (11, Zhang) Finally, the fourth article uncovers that “open source software development can be modeled as self-organizing, collaboration, social networks.” (1806, Bonaccorsi) This relationship between developers helps to further examine the social benefits associated with peer production.
Many experiments have been done and articles have been written on the topic of peer production and open source software. More research can be done on how group size impacts contribution levels and how having a central authority impacts productivity of the community. The social aspect of peer production is also something that should be further researched. Overall, having open source projects is vital to innovation and creating new, useful products.
Works Cited
Bonaccorsi, Andrea, and Cristina Rossi. “Why Open Source Software Can Succeed.” Elsevier. Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, 2003. Web. Oct. 2014. <http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0048733303000519/1-s2.0-S0048733303000519-main.pdf?_tid=92288c36-53ad-11e4-9e31-00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1413296747_e81d0671dd779522b5ffe2e325f09973>.
Hyatt, Josh. “The Oh-So-Practical Magic of Open-Source Innovation.” MIT Sloan Management Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fall 2008. Web. Oct. 2014. <http://bblp.eur.nl/bbcswebdav/pid-377831-dt-content-rid-3055341_1/courses/BKBMIN030-14/hyatt_sloan08_oh-so-practical%20magic%20of%20open%20source%20innovation.pdf>.
Von Hippel, Eric, and Georg Von Krogh. “Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science.”Organization Science 14.2 (2003): 208-23. 30 Apr. 2002. Web. Oct. 2014. <http://evhippel.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/private-collective-model-os.pdf>.
Zhang, Xiaoquan, and Feng Zhu. “Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia.” American Economic Review 101.4 (2011): 1601-615. Web. Oct. 2014.
I would like to comment on the concluding statement: “Overall, having open source projects is vital to innovation and creating new, useful products.” I must say that I fully agree with what you have written in your blog. However, there are a couple of risks/disadvantages involved with open source which I’d like to point out.
The main disadvantage really with open-source software is that it is not straightforward to use. Open-source operating systems like Linux for example cannot be learned in a day. It would require a lot of training and effort from our side before we are able to master them. We’d even need to hire someone from the outside perhaps to travel down the learning curve faster, but this comes at a certain cost.
Sadly there is a shortage of applications that are able to run on both proprietary software (closed source) and open source software. This wildfire in different versions creates confusion on what functionalities are present in which versions. A nice example of this would be the difference between Apple’s IOS and Google’s Android mobile software systems. Apple can be considered a closed software system with a clear overview of the different versions that have been published over the past couple of years with strict rules and regulations. With Android on the other hand numerous versions for tablets, mobiles and smartphones have surfaced with an open-source coding software ideology. The problem which arises now is that although Android possesses 80% of the mobile phone market in terms of physical devices, Apple generates over 60% of all revenues that originate from mobile software applications, with a market share of only 20% in terms of smartphones.
This makes it difficult for developers to create hardware that is compatible with open-source platforms. Not only is it more costly, it is a lot more time consuming to create a mobile game app on 9 different software versions and specifications for Android if you could do the exact same for just one IOS platform on which all devices work. Often you would have to rely on third-party drivers to make the hardware compatible with the different versions.
The decision of adopting open-source software should not be taken just on the basis of the low-cost involved. It entails a detailed analysis and understanding of the requirements before switching to open source to get full benefits of it.
All in all I really liked your piece!