Autonomous Open Source Community
Description
West and O’Mahony:
“We define an autonomous open source community as one that is presently independent of any one firm and community managed (cf. O’Mahony, 2007). A community-managed governance system operates outside the reach of authority embedded in employment relations. Contributors to an open source project may be volunteers or may be paid by their employers to work on the project, but decision-making on the project takes place independently from the employment structure that guides the workplace.
These projects may be supported by a non-profit foundation created specifically to support the project, but such foundations have little authority over their members (O’Mahony, 2005).” (http://www.joelwest.org/Papers/WestOMahony2008-WP.pdf)
Source
Article: The Role of Participation Architecture in Growing Sponsored Open Source Communities. By Joel West (San Jose State University College of Business) and Siobhán O’Mahony (UC Davis Graduate School of Management) February 6, 2008 preprint version of Industry and Innovation, Special Issue on “Managing Open Innovation Through Online Communities”
URL = http://www.joelwest.org/Papers/WestOMahony2008-WP.pdf