Abstract
When open source solutions began to compete successfully against established commercial products in the early 1990s, the pervasive and disruptive changes to the ICT sector which they introduce quickly became clear. Since then, open source has become mainstream and widely adopted, while remaining a driver of innovation. It has become the default way of developing software for many use cases, including the cloud and the web. However, academic insight in the new field of how open source fosters innovation was still rare. Many aspects of open source were expressed in community culture, but not yet in published research. To bridge this gap requires a combination of the two perspectives applied in this research, an inside view of open source communities and that of a researcher of innovation economics. Beyond the effects that open source has on software technology and development methodology, its impact on innovation is especially visible in three key areas, namely the governance of collaboration in social groups, standards development and intellectual property regimes. These three areas have been individually researched in scientific articles and in EU funded research projects, with the published results presented here as the main chapters. Additionally, these separate perspectives are synthesized into a theoretical framework for the economics of open source, creating connections with concepts that are unique to it, like joint stewardship or the relationship between distributing software freely and expectations of fairness and reciprocity. These results build on two larger studies, one on “The relationship between open source software and standard setting” and one on “The impact of open source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy” that were conducted in parallel, built on the concepts presented here and fed new insights back into this research. The ICT sector is becoming increasingly regulated. Especially the EU is establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital products, services and markets. Since all ICT regulation will affect and interact with the open source ecosystem, understanding the dynamics between businesses and open source communities as they are shaped by intellectual property rights, standards and governance frameworks gains further increased relevance to the functioning of the market and to achieving regulatory goals. In a time of deteriorating international security and increasing trade tensions, the global nature of open source collaboration limits the ability of regulators to control the flow of technologies, but also offers a way to collaborate across regional and political divides based on the principles of open governance and openly licensed outcomes. This research aims to illustrate why and how open source drives innovation. With that, it hopes to suggest a theoretical foundation for how open source collaboration can be help to bridge regional and cultural divides and foster diversity, equity and inclusion.
