Open Source Software and the Economics of Organization

Open source software development has organizational characteristics that are out of the ordinary. The study suggests that this organization of work can be explained by combining the organizational theory of professions with the one of clubs. The claim is in fact that these organizations are at least as good as firms in sharing rich types of information in real time because (a) constituents have symmetry of absorptive capacity, and (b) software itself is a capital structure embodying knowledge.