This article studies open-source 3D printer manufacturers’ business models, as well as the strategies into which these models fit. To do so, we use the concepts of business model innovation and specific capabilities. The analysis of the particularities of the projects and of the associated companies reveals two “pure” open-hardware strategies, the first one based on the temporary exploitation of the free/libre/open hardware community as a complementary resources, the second one based on the construction of a sustainable collaborative activity in order to maintain dynamic capabilities that are hard to imitate.

COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of digital in the fight against the pandemic (control at the border, automated tracing, creation of databases...). In this research, we analyze the Belgian response in terms of open data. First, we examine the open data publication strategy in Belgium (a federal state with a sometimes complex functioning, especially in health), second, we conduct a case study (anatomy of the pandemic in Belgium) in order to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the main COVID-19 open data repository. And third, we analyze the obstacles to open data publication. Finally, we discuss the Belgian COVID-19 open data strategy in terms of data availability, data relevance and knowledge management. In particular, we show how difficult it is to optimize the latter in order to make the best use of governmental, private and academic open data in a way that has a positive impact on public health policy.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the confinement of populations in France on the one hand and to shortages of equipment on the other hand (in particular Personal Protective Equipment). The makers therefore mobilized worldwide to produce this medical equipment. In the Hauts-de-France region, a group of makers organized to produce face shields for hospitals, public health and social care institutions and also for retailers. Our analysis of the collaborative messaging room used to coordinate the production of face shields was completed by the interview of active makers. It was based on an original tool-based integrated and hybrid (quantitative/qualitative) methodology. That work enabled us to update the profile of the participants, the intensity of their contribution, the nature of the innovation implemented, the coordination mechanisms, the associated difficulties and the role of technologies in the makers' response.

Open innovation practices are widespread in the industry. The software sector, marked by the rise of open source, is a striking example. This paper presents the preliminary results of an exploratory research on estimating the value of open intangible assets. Our approach favors simplicity and relies on a partial automation of the evaluation. An evaluation structure, distinguishing the different forms of value involved in open intangible assets, particularly applicable to software, is provided as an illustration of the proposed approach.

Cloud computing and open source are two disruptive innovations. Both deeply modify the way the computer resources are made available and monetized. They evolve between competition (e.g. open source software for desktop versus SaaS applications) and complementarity (e.g. cloud solutions based on open source components or cloud applications published under open source license). PaaSage is an open source integrated platform to support both design and deployment of cloud applications. The PaaSage consortium decided to publish the source code as open source. It needed a process for the open source license selection. Open source licensing scheme born before the development of cloud computing and evolved with the creation of new open source licenses suitable for SaaS applications. The license is a part of project governance and strongly influences the life of the project. In the context of the PaaSage European project, the issue of the open source license selection for cloud computing software has been addressed. The first section of the paper describes the state of the art about open source licenses including the known issues, a generic license-selection scheme and the automated source code analysis practices. The second section studies the common choices of licenses in cloud computing projects. The third section proposes a FLOSS license-selection process for cloud computing project following five steps: (1) inventoring software components, (2) selecting open source license, (3) approving license selection (vote), (4) spreading practical details and (5) monitoring source code. The fourth section describes the PaaSage use case. The last section consists in a discussion of the results.

The market concentration is a measure of competition and, as such, is closely monitored by public competition authorities in the European Union or the United States. Among recent claims in Europe, we study the case of the mobile operating system Google Android, despite its open source quality and the fact it can as such be regarded as presenting no risk in terms of market dominance. In this research, we analyze the concept of market concentration. We suggest that when a dominant or significant participant is open, such as is the case for the Apache web server in the overall web server market, the negative effects of high concentration are mitigated. As such, a new market concentration metric is proposed that takes into account openness, as measured by the Open Governance Index of Liz Laffan. We thus combine a concentration index and a governance index described in literature to obtain Open Concentration Index suitable for open source context.

Creative Wallonia is a framework program that puts creativity and innovation at the heart of the redevelopment of Wallonia. In the context of Creative Wallonia, the Walloon government has decided to study the implementation of Living Lab pilot projects in Wallonia. The initiators required to identify two sectors in which the pilot phase could be addressed and conducted. This paper is dedicated to the sector selection methodology that was developed for the implementation of the Walloon Living Lab pilot projects. The paper is organized in three sections. In the first section we search for the criteria that could be used to select appropriate sectors. In the second section we present the developed methodology and the selection grid based on criteria. In the third section we discuss the grid and the results after application to the Walloon call for pilot projects. The contribution of the research consists in a methodology that allows to objectivize the choice of sectors that will be applied to the future Living Lab projects. Finally, a preliminary feedback about the living labs implementation is discussed.

peer reviewed

peer reviewed

The economy of FLOSS (Free and open source software) has been the subject of numerous studies and publications, particularly on the issue of business models. However, there are fewer studies on the local networks of FLOSS providers. This research focuses on the ecosystem of Belgian FLOSS providers and, more specifically, their geographical distribution, the activities, technologies and software they support, their business models, their economic performance and the relationships between companies. The research is based on a directory containing nearly 150 companies. This directory led to the creation of a specialized search engine that helped to improve annotation. The research also uses financial data provided by the Belgian Central Balance Sheet Office. The initial results of this study show a concentration in major economic areas. The businesses are more active in the services and are heavily involved activities such as infrastructure software and Web development, activities which were common in the early years of free software development. Services for the support of business software is also common. A first analysis of the graph of relationships between providers' websites highlights the role that is played by the multinational IT companies, by FLOSS editors, by commercial FLOSS associations and especially by the Walloon centers of competence that offer vast training catalogs that are dedicated to FLOSS. This research opens up many perspectives for improving the automation of the company directory updates, the analysis of the relationship between enterprises, and the automation of the financial analysis of companies.

Wikipedia is a collaborative multilingual encyclopedia launched in 2001. We already conducted a first research on the extraction of biographical data about personalities from Belgium in order to build a large database with biographical data. However, the question of the reliability of the data arises. In particular, in the case of Wikipedia, the data are generated by users and could be subject to errors. In consequence, we wanted to answer to the following question: are the data introduced in Wikipedia articles reliable? Our research is organized in three sections. The first section provides a brief state of the art about the reliability of the user-generated data. A second section presents the methodology of our research. A third section will present the results. The error rates that were measured for the birthdate is low (0.75%), although it is higher than the 0.21% score that we observed for the baseline (reference sources). In a fourth section, the results are discussed.