The primary purpose of this paper is to present the actual role of accounting information systems. After the description of the theoretical background I state the main characteristics of modern accounting systems, and explain how these software packages can efficiently help not only the work of...

The empirical studies relative to the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) case stress the important role played by psychological and social motivations. However, the theories elaborated to cope with this dimension, such as “gift economy”, “epistemic community” or “community of...

Most research on open source software communities has focused on those that are community founded. More recently, firms have founded their own open source communities. How do sponsored open source communities differ from their autonomous counterparts? With comparative examination of 12 open...

Research on open source software, user innovation and open innovation have increasingly emphasized the role of communities in creating, shaping and disseminating innovations. However, the comparability of such studies has been hampered by the lack of a precise definition of the community...

Lately we have seen a growing interest from both public and private organisations to adopt Open Source Software (OSS), not only for a few, specific applications but also on a more general level throughout the organisation. As a consequence, the organisations’ decisions on adoption of OSS are...

This paper traces the history of , the open source typesetting program. was an early and very successful open source project that imposed its standards in a particularly competitive environment and inspired many advances in the typesetting industry. Developed over three decades, came into...

An extensive empirical literature indicates that, even without formal intellectual property rights, innovators enjoy a variety of first-mover advantages and that `imitation' is itself a costly activity. There is also accumulating evidence that an `open' approach to knowledge production can...

This is a case study of TeX, a typesetting software that was developed by Donald E. Knuth in the late 70's. Released with an open source license, it has become a reference in scientific publishing. TeX is now used to typeset and publish much of the world's scientific literature in physics and...

This paper examines the choice of license terms along the development of a piece of software. Three licenses are compared, the proprietary one, the Berkeley Software Distribution, and the General Public License. The choice of one or the other license depends on the characteristics of the...

En réponse à l'intérêt manifesté par l'industrie québécoise du logiciel et dans le contexte d'un questionnement global des administrations publiques en ce sens, le gouvernement du Québec s'intéresse de près aux logiciels libres et ouverts. Cette ouverture se comprend parfaitement dans...