A systems analysis perspective is adopted to examine the critical properties of the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) mode of innovation, as reflected on the SourceForge platform (<italic>SF.net</italic>). This approach re-scales March's (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B58">1991</xref>) framework and applies it to characterize the “innovation...

This paper investigates the skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that skill variety of...

This paper contributes to the open source software (OSS) literature by investigating the likelihood that a participant becomes a project leader. Project leaders are key actors in a virtual community and are crucial to the success of the OSS model. Knowledge of the forces that lead to the...

This paper theorizes the intra-organizational dynamics of online communities of creation such as Free and Open Source software projects. It describes the role of the participants at the peripheries of these online communities and analyze how the division of labor among peripheral and core...