Forschungsstelle Digitale Nachhaltigkeit

Governance in Collaborative Open Source Software Development Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of two Case Studies

Rahel Winkelmann, 20.01.2015

While loose cooperation among several actors is common in the open source sector, companies merging into a professionally governed collaborative open source software development organization across industries is an emerging phenomenon. The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on this new approach of software development by creating a framework for building a collaborative open source software development organization. A comparative analysis examines the governance models of two different collaborative open source software development organizations from the organizational, financial and legal perspective and reveals the autonomous and the affiliated organization type and their key characteristics. Based on these findings and by means of four expert interviews a framework consisting of eight criteria that need to be considered in order to build a collaborative open source software development organization is created.