Cooperation among competitors in the open-source arena: The case of OpenStack

Abstract

Interorganizational interactions are often complex and paradoxical. In this research, we transcend two management paradoxes: competition versus cooperation and open-source versus proprietary technology development. We follow the OpenStack open-source ecosystem where competing firms cooperate in the joint-development of a cloud infrastructure for big data. We provide a narrative, complemented with social network visualizations, which depicts the evolution of cooperation and competition. Our findings suggest that development transparency and weak intellectual property rights (i.e., characteristics of open-source ecosystems) allow a focal firm to transfer information and resources more easily between multiple alliances.