Where companies draw the line: Understanding the corporate boundaries in the collaborative creation of a digital artifact - The Case Study of Automotive Grade Linux

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9227-2921

Advisor Information

Matt Germonprez

Location

MBSC Gallery Room 308 - G

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

Start Date

4-3-2022 10:45 AM

End Date

4-3-2022 12:00 PM

Abstract

Open source software is a digital artifact that individuals and corporations collaboratively develop. Open source started as a way for individual developers to solve personal problems by building and fixing software that they used. As open source has matured, corporations have become participants, and through this participation, open source has evolved into a more organized, corporate-driven activity where individuals, as well as corporations, contribute to large, critically important projects such as the Linux kernel. Corporations have even started forming open source communities. These corporate open source communities develop software that every member corporation can use, modify, enhance, and monetize.

In creating open source software, tensions arise for corporations on deciding what features to contribute to open source that everyone can use and what features to keep proprietary to remain competitive. This research aims to explore how corporations manage boundaries in their engagement with open source communities to decide when to collaborate and when to compete. This research will use boundary theory to study Automotive Grade Linux, an open source project of Linux Foundation started by automobile manufacturers and other related corporations who collaboratively develop the Automotive Grade Linux Operating System. As open source software has become a de facto part of corporate software development, knowing how corporations participate with each other in these open communities is vital to know where the future of software development work is headed.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
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Mar 4th, 10:45 AM Mar 4th, 12:00 PM

Where companies draw the line: Understanding the corporate boundaries in the collaborative creation of a digital artifact - The Case Study of Automotive Grade Linux

MBSC Gallery Room 308 - G

Open source software is a digital artifact that individuals and corporations collaboratively develop. Open source started as a way for individual developers to solve personal problems by building and fixing software that they used. As open source has matured, corporations have become participants, and through this participation, open source has evolved into a more organized, corporate-driven activity where individuals, as well as corporations, contribute to large, critically important projects such as the Linux kernel. Corporations have even started forming open source communities. These corporate open source communities develop software that every member corporation can use, modify, enhance, and monetize.

In creating open source software, tensions arise for corporations on deciding what features to contribute to open source that everyone can use and what features to keep proprietary to remain competitive. This research aims to explore how corporations manage boundaries in their engagement with open source communities to decide when to collaborate and when to compete. This research will use boundary theory to study Automotive Grade Linux, an open source project of Linux Foundation started by automobile manufacturers and other related corporations who collaboratively develop the Automotive Grade Linux Operating System. As open source software has become a de facto part of corporate software development, knowing how corporations participate with each other in these open communities is vital to know where the future of software development work is headed.