Open Source Movements as a Model for Organizing

Abstract

Open source software such as the operating system Linux has in a few years created much attention as an alternative way to develop and distribute software. Open source is to let anyone have access to the source code, so that they can modify it. Open source could be seen as a movement, where communities of highly skilled programmers collectively develop software, often of a quality that outperforms commercial proprietary software. These movements are based on virtual networking on Internet and the web. They are loosely coupled communities kept together by strong common values related to hacker culture. Work seems to be totally distributed, delegated and loosely coupled. The highly skilled members contribute by pride to the collective effort of free software development. In this paper the open source phenomena is investigated from different perspectives. In this paper it is claimed that the open source movements is one key to the understanding of future forms of organizations, knowledge work and business