This edited book is a welcome addition to the open source software (OSS) research literature. It begins with a preface that describes the four key principles of OSS development as a voluntary association of actors, self‐organisation, self‐sustainment and co‐creation. The remainder of the book, made up of nine chapters, is organised under these headings: OSS Emergence and Development; OSS Rewards' and Incentives' Structure; OSS Success, Measurement and Metrics.
The first chapter examines the principles underlying distributed innovation using three case studies: the development of the Linux kernel, threadless T‐shirts, and InnoCentive.com. This is followed by an examination of the involvement of private, for‐profit companies in OSS projects and a case study of the adoption of OSS packages by public administration bodies in the Emilia‐Romagna region of Italy. The three chapters on reward and incentives include an empirical test of a model of developer motivation using data from SourceForge, a conceptual model of social capital in OSS communities, and a discussion of the concept of “credits” as a form of commerce in OSS projects. The final section emphasises techniques for measuring OSS project success, including a comparison of projects hosted on SourceForge with those hosted elsewhere.
My only criticism of the book is that most authors take a developer‐centric view of what happens in an OSS project, and therefore ignore the roles and contributions of non‐developers. Nonetheless, the book provides a broad perspective on factors that lead to successful OSS projects, many of which may also be applied to other domains, such as open access, open content, open government, and open communities. Each chapter includes a list of references, and there is a detailed subject index. Many of the chapter authors will be familiar to people who read the OSS literature regularly, with contributions from Karim Lakhani, Cristina Rossi, Katherine Stewart, Kevin Crowston, and James Howison.
