How Community Managed Software Projects Protect Their Commons

* Article: Guarding the commons: how community managed software projects protect their work. By Siobhán O’Mahony. Research Policy, Volume 32, Issue 7, July 2003, Pages 1179-1198

URL = https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733303000489

Abstract

"Theorists often speculate why open source and free software project contributors give their work away. Although contributors make their work publicly available, they do not forfeit their rights to it. Community managed software projects protect their work by using several legal and normative tactics, which should not be conflated with a disregard for or neglect of intellectual property rights. These tactics allow a project’s intellectual property to be publicly and freely available and yet, governable. Exploration of this seemingly contradictory state may provide new insight into governance models for the management of digital intellectual property."

Excerpt

"Open source software shares some similarities with privately produced pure public goods, but also differs from traditional definitions of public goods in important ways. It is owned and governed by a bounded community of individuals as opposed to a government, consortium or single private actor. While open source software is publicly available and redistributable, contributors to community managed software projects do maintain and exercise rights over their work.1 A community managed software project is an open source or free software project initiated and managed by a distributed group of people who do not share a common employer."