Open-Source Innovation for New Business Models

The International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences has issued a call for papers for an upcoming special issue entitled Open-Source Innovation for New Business Models:

While [open source] communities are becoming important sources of new knowledge and innovation, it is a challenge to create business value out of such innovation because the participants are novices, collaborating without any meaningful organisational structure. Thus, it is important for both academicians and practitioners to explore innovative approaches to exploiting the value of collaborative open-source communities for developing new business models and value creation.

The focus of this Special Issue will be on the use of open-source innovation to foster knowledge creation and sharing, capture opportunities for developing new products and services, redesign the value chain for efficiency improvement, reinvent the concept of customer value, and expand the customer base. New business models that bring benefits to both participants and the organisation are the real core value of open-source innovation.

Submissions are due by April 1, 2009.

We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can’t Have Our Code

The Code4Lib Journal has an interesting article examining 6 reasons why institutions don't contribute back to open source communities. While written from the perspective of libraries, many readers will recognize these reasons in operation elsewhere. The reasons given are:

1. perfectionism: unless the code is perfect, we don’t want anyone to see it


2. dependency: if we share this with you, you will never leave us alone


3. quirkiness: we’d gladly share, but we can’t since we’re so weird


4. redundancy: we think your project is neat, but we can do better


5. competitiveness: we want to be the acknowledged leader


6. misunderstanding: a fundamental inability to understand how an open source community works