Coopetition of software firms in Open source software ecosystems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how software firms engage in coopetition within open source ecosystems, highlighting their strategies for balancing collaboration and competition to create shared value.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of coopetition dynamics in OSS ecosystems, including six key themes and practical implications for firms.

Findings

Firms focus on co-creating value while managing competition.

Six themes of coopetition include gatekeeping and shared code filtering.

Firms adopt strategies like open-core sourcing to navigate ecosystem challenges.

Abstract

Software firms participate in an ecosystem as a part of their innovation strategy to extend value creation beyond the firms boundary. Participation in an open and independent environment also implies the competition among firms with similar business models and targeted markets. Hence, firms need to consider potential opportunities and challenges upfront. This study explores how software firms interact with others in OSS ecosystems from a coopetition perspective. We performed a quantitative and qualitative analysis of three OSS projects. Finding shows that software firms emphasize the co-creation of common value and partly react to the potential competitiveness on OSS ecosystems. Six themes about coopetition were identified, including spanning gatekeepers, securing communication, open-core sourcing and filtering shared code. Our work contributes to software engineering research with a rich description of coopetition in OSS ecosystems. Moreover, we also come up with several implications for software firms in pursing a harmony participation in OSS ecosystems.