[p2p-research] a study on the governance foundations of free software projects

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear George,

I'm publishing this on the 9th, and would really appreciate a commentary by
you, based on your own research and insights. See in particular the issue
not covered by this project, i.e. the influence of the foundations on the
communities.

It would be nice if could write a sensible note on that topic!!

Can you perhaps forward the call to other governance researchers?

Michel


http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/research-on-open-source-software-foundations/2008/11/09

You could say this is the article I've been waiting for. Finally a study
examining the formal Foundations in charge of open source projects.

Thanks, Zhensheng
Xie<http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/738/704>!!


The following are excerpts from the research summary which appeared in OSBR.

*The research here is valuable to study the role of these Foundations in
their own right, and what the influence is of corporations over them. What
seems still missing though, is a study of how these governance institutions
influence the community of producers themselves.*

BOD refers to the Board of Directors of the foundations.

*1. Introduction and Definition*

"*Communities that develop open source software (OSS) are virtual entities
on the Internet, not legal entities. Some open source communities establish
open source software foundations (OSSF) in order to protect their
intellectual property and carry out contractual arrangements. As legal
entities, OSSF help communities attain their long-term goals, hold community
assets, provide resources to communities, and balance interests amongst
different stakeholders.*

*Typically when an open source community incorporates as an OSSF, they seek
to gain financial advantages from donations and tax exemptions. OSSF is a
non-profit organization (NPO) with a primary objective to support or to
actively engage in activities of public or private interest without any
commercial or monetary profit purposes. A NPO is a corporation that can
handle business dealings, sign contracts, and own property as any other
individual or for-profit corporation. NPOs differ from for-profits in terms
of taxes and governance. A NPO's governance structures preclude private
financial gain. OSSF in the US are registered under tax-exempt 501(c)(3) or
501(c)(6). 501(c)(6) is reserved for "Business Leagues and groups such as
Chambers of Commerce" and is a form of a business network in favour of
pursuing members' own business interests whereas 501(c)(3) organizations
provide public benefits. Most OSSF registered in the US are 501(c)(3)
non-profit organizations. In the US, both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) NPOs are
exempt from most federal income taxes. OSSFs registered outside of the US
usually have similar benefits. From a legal perspective, an OSSF is a legacy
NPO.*

*An OSSF must have at least one software project in which individuals are
contributing to a new software release. The Apache Software Foundation is an
OSSF while the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is not as it focuses on
standards and does not hold any software projects*."

*2. Governance Typology*

"*Governance refers to the overall processes and structures used to direct
and manage an organization's operations and activities. Three aspects of
governance were the focus of our research: i) governance structure; ii)
activities of the Board of Directors (BOD); and iii) occupations of the
members of the BOD.*

*Most of the sample OSSF are membership based NPOs with the elected BOD
bearing the major responsibilities for the organization. Members of the OSSF
can be either a merit member or a sponsor member. An individual becomes a
merit member after being recognized as making non-trivial contributions to
the foundation. A sponsor member is a company that donates resources, such
as money and developers, and in return is admitted as a member of the
foundation. Typically, individuals are merit members, organizations are
sponsor members, and employees of organizations represent sponsor members.*

*Based on "the extent to which the sponsor members can participate in the
decision making of OSSF", we found three types of OSSF governance structures
:*

*1. Merit: all members are merit members with full voting rights.*

*2. Merit dominated: merit members are in a majority and it is difficult for
sponsor members as a group to affect outcomes.*

*3. Sponsor dominated: sponsor members are in a majority and may be
classified into tiers where the size of the payment determines tier
membership. Merit members typically work for a company or research centre.*

*The ASF, SPI, and the Plone Foundation are merit type foundations. The
GNOME Foundation and the Python Software Foundation are Merit dominated. The
Eclipse Foundation is sponsor dominated.*

*OSSF governance is comprised of five dimensions. *

*The first dimension focuses on how much effort the BOD spends on strategic
planning and common vision development. The second and third dimensions
relate to the composition of the BOD: i) members who have a reputation in
the OSS community and ii) members with a background in engineering and
science. The fourth dimension deals with power, specifically the power the
BOD has over timing and content of the roadmap and software releases and the
power of sponsor members. Finally, the fifth dimension focuses on sponsor
members' ability to participate in decision-making*

*Twelve categories of governance activities were defined as being carried
out by the BODs of OSSF.*

*The twelve activity categories are: i) strategic planning and common vision
development; ii) development of policy and guidelines; iii) project
governance; iv) financial governance; v) primary resources governance; vi)
human resources governance; vii) fund-raising; viii) external relation
management; ix) BOD self development; x) governance structure management;
xi) community development; and xii) conference governance. *. "

*3. More Information*

Read the details and conclusions
here<http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/738/704>
.


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