Cui Bono: Do Open Source Software Incubator Policies and Procedures Benefit the Projects or the Incubator?

Open source software (OSS), a form of Digital or Knowledge Commons, underlies much the technology that we use in our daily lives. The existence and continuation OSS relies on contribution private resources – personal time, volunteer energy, effort numerous actors (e.g., developers’ time as common-pool resource) to public goods, benefits which are enjoyed by everyone. Nonprofit organizations such Apache Software Foundation (ASF) attempt aid this process providing various collective services projects, acting second-order actor production good. To end, ASF Incubator has created policies essentially rules norms serve protect its interests and, they say, increase sustainability projects. Each policy requires investment (in terms money time) an incubating project taking personnel time), can accrue either party. Such may impose additional costs leading decreased Using documents, construct dataset records who bears cost enjoys benefit each procedure. We code most statements costing one party benefiting distribution according indicates whether is contributing good if doing so sustainably. Through two-way ANOVA, characterize impact goods (OSS). Being part imposes some but these make projects more sustainable. Our analysis shows fairly symmetric between Thus, configuration “institutional design” could producing require.