ABSTRACT
The FL/OSS movement can be viewed as the improbable success of individuals and collectives in challenging existing institutions, refl ecting their desire to operate in the market economy, but with a difference-that difference being the willingness to contribute freely to the creation of a public good. The FL/OSS model of organization is often seen as a template for work and the organization of commons-based peer or social production that can be transferred to other domains of intellectual work.1 The FL/OSS movement is increasingly a story of transformation in which a new model of social production is incorporated into the strategy of dominant institutions and forms the basis for new ways of conducting business. Successful partnerships between fi rms and communities are used to showcases strategies, such as ‘open innovation’, for better exploitation of the ‘commons’. Slowly, but steadily, attention is shifting away from understanding the gift and exchange economies as contrasting logics for coordinating and motivating action, and towards hybridity, with the objective of a successful synthesis.
