Open collaboration

Open collaboration refers to any "system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who cooperate voluntarily to create a product (or service) of economic value, which is made freely available to contributors and noncontributors alike."[1] It is prominently observed in open source software, and has been initially described in Richard Stallman's GNU Manifesto,[2] as well as Eric S. Raymond's 1997 essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Beyond open source software, open collaboration is also applied to the development of other types of mind or creative works, such as information provision in Internet forums, or the production of encyclopedic content in Wikipedia.[3]

The organizing principle behind open collaboration is that of peer production.[4] Peer production communities are structured in an entirely decentralized manner, but differ from markets in that they function without price-based coordination, and often on the basis of volunteering only. Such communities are geared toward the production of openly accessible public or "common" goods, but differ from the State as well as charity groups in that they operate without a formal hierarchical structure, and rest solely on the construction of a rough, evolving consensus among participants.[5][6]

  1. ^ Sheen S. Levine; Michael J. Prietula (2014). Open Collaboration for Innovation: Principles and Performance
  2. ^ Lakhani, Karim R., & von Hippel, Eric (2003). How Open Source Software Works: Free User to User Assistance. Research Policy, 32, 923–943 doi:10.2139/ssrn.290305
  3. ^ Yochai Benkler, Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw (2015). Peer Production: A Form of Collective Intelligence. In Handbook of Collective Intelligence, edited by Thomas Malone and Michael Bernstein. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.[1]
  4. ^ Yochai Benkler (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven, USA.[2]
  5. ^ Yochai Benkler (2002). Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm. Yale law journal, pp. 369-446 [3]
  6. ^ Faraj, S., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Majchrzak, Ann (2011). Knowledge Collaboration in Online Communities. Organization Science, 22(5), 1224-1239, doi:10.1287/orsc.1100.0614