Creating User-Led Open-Source Consortia

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dirk Riehle
• Subject Area: Software Engineering and Programming Languages
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 506460878

Open-source software is being developed using different organizational forms. Some projects have no formal organizational backing and some projects are managed by non-profit organizations (foundations, consortia). Of those consortia that are led by companies, user-led open source consortia stand out as a relatively recent phenomenon. In such a consortium, the users (organizations) of a proposed open-source software join forces to develop the software they need to operate their business. Often, these user organizations are not from the IT industry: Examples are U.S. universities (Kuali Foundation), car manufacturers (GENIVI Foundation), or the German energy distribution network operators (openKONSEQUENZ e.G.). We have observed rapid growth in new user-led consortia, yet little is known about how to best organize such consortia for success. We propose to investigate how to successfully create user-led open source consortia. We propose to perform traditional theory building and evaluation. Specifically, we intend to build an initial theory using the qualitative survey research method. Going beyond theory presentation in research papers, we will cast our theory as a handbook which expresses what we learned from foundations and consortia as (still hypothesized) best practices for creating such consortia. We will then evaluate our theory using method and data triangulation. We have already built a comprehensive database of known user foundations from which to sample. We will perform both case study research and action research. The proposed case study research will be on historic and current cases, depending on availability, and in the proposed action research we will be actively guiding the organizations. The result of the research will be a theory of how to create user-led open source consortia that has been evaluated using multiple research methods over several iterations and which we, therefore, expect to be of high certainty.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants