A Comparision of Motivation and Openness in Hybrid Open Source and Open Source Software Projects

Abstract

Open Source software development is now becoming used for commercial software development, where software companies manage open source projects that are open for everyone who wants to contribute. This is called Hybrid Open Source Software since it stands with one foot in the Open Source camp and one foot in the commercial development camp. Since hybrid open source software is a new phenomenon, it is interesting to compare both the projects and its contributors to more traditional open source projects. Based on the two research questions (RQ1-RQ2) this thesis aims to find out what motivates the contributors in hybrid open source projects and how democratic company maintained open source projects are. RQ1: What are the differences in motivation for the various types of open source projects?RQ2: How open are hybrid projects compared to other OSS projects?