1 Introduction
Availability of source code in Free/Open Source Software (FOSS [1]) is defined with its three essential features [2].
1- Source code must be distributed with the software or otherwise made available for no more than the cost of distribution.
2- Anyone may redistribute the software for free, without royalties or licensing fees to the author.
3- Anyone may modify the software or derive other software from it, and then distribute the modified software under the same terms (Weber, 2004: 5).
However, FOSS is still a puzzlement for a wide spectrum of academic disciplines: software engineering, industrial engineering, economics, sociology, psychology, etc. Each academic discipline asks its own questions to understand the FOSS phenomenon and try to explain it in the boundaries of its own discipline. For example, recent literature focuses on two questions and seeks their answers in different disciplines. The first question is, ‘what are the motivations of individuals for engagement in FOSS projects?’ (von Krogh et al., 2003; Bitzer et al., 2004; Raymond, 1999, 2000; Zeitlyn, 2003) and the latter question is about FOSS’s relationship with commercial world, ‘in what level will FOSS have impact on the competitive strategy and organizations of firms?’ (Baldwin and Clark, 2003; Lindman, 2004). Consequently, answer of the first question is mostly sought in the context of either social psychology or anthropology and latter is studied in the context of microeconomics. These studies give essential insights either about the motivations behind individuals or about FOSS business models. However, they grasp the FOSS by an approach that makes parts of the whole as static and independent of one another.