Hybrid Innovation: The Dynamics of Collaboration Between Public and Private in the free/libre open source software (FLOSS) innovation system

This paper analyses the socio-technical construction of GNU/Linux through the co-production of the public and the private sectors. Unlike innovation based on a strong professional culture involving close collaboration between professionals in the academic sector and corporations, FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) entails a global knowledge network, which consists of 1) a heterogeneous community of individuals and organisations who do not necessarily have professional backgrounds in computer science but competent skills to understand programming and working in a public domain; 2) corporations. Through analysing how agents in the FLOSS community and the OSS (Open Source Software) corporations work together and examining their socio-technical practices, artefacts and cultures, the paper identifies an alternative innovation pattern quite distinct from that found in conventional technological innovation systems. Commercialisation of OSS denotes a hybrid innovation model, which takes the advantage of acquiring resources both from the community and firms. The community offers space for experimental projects and informal communications, while firms stabilises and standardises the development of these community projects by incorporating them together and putting into markets. Unlike working in an informal innovation ambience where shared interests are the main concern for volunteer developers, after joining a firm one has to engage in the operation of a smaller subgroup, working on specific projects, with certain colleagues. However, such a formalised/institutionalised working partnership does not mean that firm-based developers have terminated their connections with the community. By contrast, previous (informal) cooperation on parallel community projects remains of significance in these firm-based developers' daily practices. The paper draws on data from my fieldwork undertaken in academia, firms and the FLOSS community to show the dynamics of collaboration between public and private in the FLOSS innovation system. The findings will shed light on interactions between OSS firms and community members.

Yuwei Lin was born on 8th October 1977 in Taiwan. She received her bachelor degree in economics and a diploma in women and gender studies from the National Taiwan University in 1999. After graduation, she worked as a full-time research assistant in environmental economics at the National Taiwan University conducting a research project on sustainable development, funded by the National Science Research Council. In October 2000, she joined the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at the University of York in the UK and started her PhD research. Her PhD project involves strategic investigations into cultural innovation and organizational change in a community of practice at the cutting edge of software technology. Since October 2003, she has started collaboration with the Open Source Software Foundry research group based at the Computer Science Institute, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. Her tasks are mainly providing consultations on the European governmental policies on IT and open source software, analysing the Taiwan-based open source software developer survey, and organising the forthcoming 2004 Asian Open Source Software Forum held in Taipei.