Open-Sourcing: on the road to the ultimate global source

Open-sourcing is a relatively new term and indicates a less explored theme within the overall perspective of global sourcing. Until recently the term has usually been taken to refer to commercially controlled and created proprietary software which switches, partially or fully to open source licenses – n example would be Netscape and the Mozilla browser. More recently the term has come to take a rather different meaning, implying a deeper link between the open source movement and the tradition of IT/IS outsourcing. Thus open-sourcing has been defined as ‘outsourcing to a global but largely unknown workforce’ (Ågerfalk et al., 2006a). This paper explores this emerging though tentative trend and charts eight basic sourcing models drawn from the outsourcing and open source domains and which converge towards open-sourcing. In the spirit of a substantial link between open source software processes and outsourcing of IT/IS activities, the paper analyses the characteristics of open-sourcing, and suggests when and why companies might adopt the approach. This draws on the broader literature on open source adoption, both of the products of open source and the processes. Based on this analysis we propose a detailed framework of opensourcing. The framework places open-sourcing in perspective from the point of view of global perspectives on IT/IS outsourcing but also as an emerging strand of the open source movement