Abstract

JOURNAL OF GLOBAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT 2021, VOL. 24, NO. 1, 90–91 BOOK REVIEW Firm-Sponsored Developers in OpenSource SoftwareProjects, by Homscheid, Dirk., Wiesbaden, Springer Gabler, 2020, 236 pp., $89.99 (softcover), ISBN: 978-3-658-31477-4 Open-source software (OSS) has experienced rapid development and adoption, with some products capturing significant market share. A monumental example of collaboration, OSS paved the way for other “open” initiatives like open access and open data. The OSS idea started in the 1980s, though the term was not coined until 1998. The term “open access” was introduced by the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002. In 2007, a group including Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, introduced the term “open data.” Many firms have tried to establish a presence in the OSS community to achieve benefits. IBM and Sun were among the first firms to contribute to OSS. As open source seems contrary to the for-profit business model, why would companies contribute to it instead of opposing it? The remarkable book ‘Firm-Sponsored Developers in Open Source Software Projects’ by Dirk Homscheid answers this question by focusing on the role of for-profit representatives in open-source projects. It compares the motivation of company-affiliated developers versus other contributors. The book uses