This position paper presents some useful metaphors to think about new conceptual model for open innovation process.

Software development is a knowledge intensive activity and software developers are knowledge workers. Knowledge needed for software development is often distributed among different developers. Supporting efficient knowledge collaboration and transfer is thus essential for software development organizations to remain competitive. This paper proposes a new theory /sub y/namic community to support knowledge collaboration and discusses its application in software development. Dynamic community integrates the traditional knowledge management approach in which knowledge is formalized and accumulated in knowledge repositories, and the community-based knowledge collaboration approach in which knowledge is transferred through informal community participation and human contacts. The dynamic community theory takes into full consideration individual knowledge workers' ever-changing needs for new knowledge as well as the role of social relationship of knowledge workers in effective knowledge collaboration. This paper introduces the dynamic community theory, a general system architecture of sociotechnical environments in support of dynamic community, and its application in software development.

An Open Source Software (OSS) project is unlikely to be successful unless there is an accompanied community that provides the platform for developers and users to collaborate. Members of such communities are volunteers whose motivation to participate and contribute is of essential importance to the success of OSS projects. In this paper, we aim to create an understanding of what motivates people to participate in OSS communities. We theorize that learning is one of the motivational forces. Our theory is grounded in the learning theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and is supported by analyzing the social structure of OSS communities and the co-evolution between OSS systems and communities. We also discuss practical implications of our theory for creating and maintaining sustainable OSS communities as well as for software engineering research and education.

Jun is a large open-source graphics and multimedia library. It is object-oriented and supports 3D geometry, topography and multimedia. This paper reviews the development of the Jun library from five perspectives: open-source, software evolution processes, development styles, technological support, and development data. It concludes with lessons learned from the perspective of a for-profit company providing open-source object-oriented software to the community.

Based on the capability maturity model (CMM), process improvement at OMRON, a Japanese microprocessor manufacturer, increased project predictability in three ways: accuracy, variability, and performance. The authors use the project visibility index (PVI) and other measurements to quantitatively demonstrate this. Qualitative analysis of how and why OMRON achieved higher project visibility and increases in the QCD (quality, cost, and delivery on time) factors are supported with data on review-effort ratios and productivity. They identify factors directly affected by high project visibility.