Understanding Partnerships between Corporations and the Open Source Community: A Research Gap

This article argues that the literature has overlooked corporations\´ motivations to engage in open source development endeavors, though "going-open" strategies are becoming increasingly common in the market-place. Almost invariably, motivational studies on open source have focused on volunteers, creating an imbalance that favors the adopters of such strategy, not the community. The complexities (and our lack of understanding) of the relationships between corporations and the open source community are presented through the sourceforge.net example. A new research route is suggested to fill this gap.