Beyond Open Source Software: An Introduction to ...

Working Papers on Information Systems

ISSN 1535-6078

Beyond Open Source Software: An Introduction to Researching Open Content and Wikipedia Chitu Okoli Concordia University, Canada

Abstract The same open source philosophy that has been traditionally applied to software development can be applied to the collaborative creation of non-software information products, such as books, music and video. Such products are generically referred to as open content, free content, or free cultural works. Due largely to the success of large projects such as Wikipedia and the Creative Commons, open content has gained increasing attention not only in the popular media, but also in scholarly research. It is important to rigorously investigate the workings of the open source process in these new media of expression. This paper introduces the scope of emerging research on the open content phenomenon, other than open source software. Keywords: Open content, free cultural works, open source software, Wikipedia Permanent URL: http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64 Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works License Reference: Okoli, C. (2009). "Beyond Open Source Software: An Introduction to Researching Open Content and Wikipedia ," . Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems, 9(64). http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

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Beyond Open Source Software: An Introduction to Researching Open Content Chitu Okoli John Molson School of Business, Concordia University October 2010

Abstract The same open source philosophy that has been traditionally applied to software development can be applied to the collaborative creation of non-software information products, such as books, music and video. Such products are generically referred to as open content or free cultural works. Due largely to the success of large projects such as Wikipedia and the Creative Commons, open content has gained increasing attention not only in the popular media, but also in scholarly research. It is important to rigorously investigate the workings of the open source process in these new media of expression. This paper introduces the scope of emerging research on the open content phenomenon, other than open source software. We develop a framework for categorizing copyrightable works as utilitarian, factual, aesthetic or opinioned works. Based on these categories, we consider the applicability of some implications of findings from open source software research for open content. We also briefly review the literature for some specific directions of open content research, involving the quality of products, the marketing of digital music, and open content in developing countries.

Introduction The same open source philosophy that has been traditionally applied to software development can be applied to the collaborative creation of non-software information products, such as encyclopedias, books, and dictionaries. Most notably, the nine-year-old Wikipedia is a comprehensive general encyclopedia, comprising over 16 million articles in over 200 languages, built using the ―open source‖ model. This extension of the open source model to apply to non-software information products is generally called ―open content‖ (Pfaffenberger 2001). As open content begins to develop in its breadth and depth of applications, the possibilities of new community-created media products is endless: open books, music, video, poetry, recipes—indeed products of just about any medium (see http://freedomdefined.org/Portal:Index). This article describes a research program that seeks to establish a theoretical base for the scholarly study of this nascent and rapidly growing phenomenon. With the experience from open source software, much has been learnt and yet needs to be learned; however, the applications to diverse media are much broader and far-reaching than just to software. To understand how and why open content is becoming increasingly significant in today‘s information society, it is necessary to have some understanding of the development of open source software. Indeed, although open source software preceded open content, it should properly be classified as a subset—the first phenomenon—of open content. We begin by defining the term, which is not such a simple matter. However, before developing a definition, it is theoretically important to distinguish our 1 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

definition of open content from other categories of intellectual property that might be labelled as such. In particular, we distinguish open content from the following categories: 1. Free content (which we call generally call gratis content in this article), which usually permits download at no cost, but not modification or sale; 2. Open access, which is a specific kind of free or gratis content as described in the previous item, mainly referring to the gratis availability of books or scholarly articles (Churchill and Vanderbeeken 2008); 3. User-generated content, where users contribute content to a Web service; the contributors usually grant the host website a non-exclusive license to distribute the content, but do not usually grant anyone rights to modify it; moreover, the content is usually presented as atomic contributions (such as user comments, uploaded videos or pictures), with limited cumulative development of individual works or contributions; 4. Social media, where the focus is on interaction between Internet users and the resulting communal and technology-mediated sociological effects; this is closely related to user-generated content with a focus on interpersonal communication; 5. Creative Commons-licensed content, which might fit our open content definition, but often includes provisions which do not (Cheliotis 2009); 6. Open standards, which permit royalty-free implementation of a technical specification, but strongly discourages derivatives, which would defeat their purpose of standardisation (Zhu 2007; Mukhtar and Rosberg 2003); 7. Open Education Resources (OER), which often include a clause forbidding commercial usage; however, some OER is in fact licensed as open content according to our definition here (Downes 2007). The one common feature across all these categories is that they are made available to the public under a license that permits users to redistribute them at no charge. Other restrictions do apply in all cases, even if they be so minor as an obligation to acknowledge the copyright owner, which distinguishes these works from the public domain, for which no restrictions apply. In this article, when we need to refer collectively to all these kinds of works, we will refer to them as ―redistributable works.‖

Definition of open content In the late 1980s, the Free Software Foundation developed ―the Free Software Definition,‖ a clear, succinct definition of what they termed ―free software,‖ emphasizing ―free‖ to indicate software that confers freedom and rights to users, rather than software available at no charge (Wikipedia contributors 2009b). In 1997, the Open Source Initiative developed the similar ―Open Source Definition,‖ emphasizing developers‘ rights to access, modify, and distribute source code (Perens 1999). However, for several years there has been no comparable precise specification of what qualifies for the label ―open content.‖ As a result, this label is used for media as diverse as public domain texts released on the Web (such as Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org) and open access scholarly journals that are made available for free download, yet do not permit modifications of any kind. There have been two significant responses to this ambiguity. In 2005-2006, Pollock, Keegan and Walsh developed the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD) (http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/), an attempt to generalize the Open Source Definition to open content and ―open data.‖ The OKD has eleven conditions for considering a work ―open,‖ the most important of which are 1) available gratis; 2) permits redistribution; 3) permits distribution of derivative works; 4) no technological barriers to use, such as digital rights management; 5) ―no discrimination against persons or groups‖ permitted; and 6) ―no discrimination against fields of endeavor‖ permitted (in particular, commercial reuse must be permitted). 2 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

While the OKD aligned themselves with the open source software movement in modeling their definition after the Open Source Definition, another group led by Erik Möller (most of them significant figures in Wikipedia‘s organizational structure, the Wikimedia Foundation) developed what they style the Definition of Free Cultural Works (DFCW) (http://freedomdefined.org/Definition), patterned closely after the Free Software Definition: 1) the freedom for anyone to use the work for any purpose without restriction; 2) the freedom to full access to the source material used for generating the content; 3) the freedom to redistribute copies of the original work; and 4) the freedom to redistribute modified versions of the work (derivative works). The question of using a term like ―open content‖ versus one like ―free content‖ or ―free cultural works‖ harkens directly to the fierce debate between advocates of ―free software‖ versus ―open source software.‖ Free software advocates stress that the most important meaning of the word ―free‖ is ―liberty,‖ and that this appellation is thus the most appropriate for software that accords users certain prescribed liberties. They criticize the term ―open source‖ as meaning nothing more than that people are allowed to see the source code, without reference to any of the other important liberties that form part of their official Free Software Definition (nor even of the Open Source Definition, for that matter) (Stallman 2007). Open source software advocates counter that the most common understanding of ―free software‖ is simply ―freeware,‖ that is, software that is available at no charge, regardless of license or distribution rights. They argue that this understanding undermines the important principle of access to the source code. While they concede that ―open source‖ is not completely descriptive (though both sides admit that the English language provides no better alternative than what they respectively attempt), they argue that the term is novel to novices, and invites a definition on their own terms, unlike ―free software,‖ whose meaning novices incorrectly assume to understand (Perens 1999; Raymond 2001). In our view, the debate is not primarily about the appropriateness of the terms; rather, the terms have become banners representing two significantly different philosophical perspectives. Free software advocates insist on the need to defend what they see as a human right to access to information, embodied in this case as full access to software, such a critical component of our contemporary information society. They perceive open source advocates (and under similar terms, the Creative Commons organization) as sell-outs who are willing to compromise information rights for the sake of gaining short-sighted short-term gains in partnering with proprietary-minded businesses. Open source advocates, in contrast, tend to extol the technological and societal benefits of open source software and advocate it as a social good, without seeing the need to insist on it as a human right. They explicitly chose the term ―open source‖ to distance themselves from the deliberate revolutionary implications of ―free software‖ (Raymond 2001). The DFCW was developed to guard and shape the very existence of open content development communities. Open content uses copyright law to preserve certain freedoms (hence the name, ―free cultural works‖) regarding the creation, modification, and sharing of any information or content that can be stored in digitized format. Similar to the description of free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html), the DFCW considers a license to be ―free‖ if it grants users of the content the following key rights: 1. The freedom for anyone to use the work for any purpose without restriction. There are no restrictions against commercial, military, foreign, or any other use, and discrimination against users for any reason is expressly forbidden. 2. The freedom to full access to the source material used for generating the content. For textual content, the text itself is the source material. However, for other content such as performed music or dances, this right grants content creators access to the music scores and the choreography sequences, respectively. (Of course, for computer software, this would refer to the source code.) When a content creator sees how a work was actually composed, as specified in the 3 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

source material, they can fully understand the inner workings and can intelligently modify it as they deem appropriate. 3. The freedom to redistribute copies of the original work. Not only does open content freely permit redistribution, but it also permit sale of the work at any price. Restrictions on commercial redistribution disqualify a work as being ―free.‖ 4. The freedom to redistribute modified versions of the work (derivative works). This includes absorbing the work, in whole or in part, into other works created by other content creators, and to redistribute and sell these derivative works. While the DFCW defines content as a FCW if its license grants these four freedoms, it does permit certain restrictions. ―In particular, requirements for attribution, for symmetric collaboration (i.e., ‗copyleft‘), and for the protection of essential freedom are considered permissible restrictions‖ (Erik Möller 2008). We choose not to use the term ―free content‖ since the most intuitive meaning of that term is ―content that is available for free, that is, at no financial cost.‖ We do not consider it helpful to have to further specify that our meaning is actually ―free as in free speech, not as in free beer,‖ as the Free Software Foundation is forced to do. Moreover, we consider the term ―cultural works‖ ambiguous and overly general; it has been used with meanings more narrow than referring to any copyrightable work (Cheliotis 2009). For example, a simple search in June 2009 of Proquest‘s database yielded only 14 peer-reviewed articles with the key phrase ―open content,‖ all of which referred to information products that are made available to the public under terms less stringent than ―all rights reserved‖ copyright. ―Free content‖ yielded 10 results, and all but one meant ―content that is free of charge‖; the sole exception was a reference to Wikipedia, the ―free content‖ encyclopedia, which is the only usage that fits our meaning in this article. This demonstrates our point that the common understanding of ―free content‖ is free-ofcharge content, not freedom-granting content. Incidentally, there were 0 articles found on the key phrase ―free cultural works.‖ As such, we will use the currently recognized term ―open content,‖ while using both the OKD and the DFCW to qualify the term in our usage. Specifically, in this article, we define open content as any copyrighted or public domain work that is distributed in a format that fully permits content creators to modify it, under a license that accords them unrestricted, royalty-free permission to redistribute originals or derivative works; it may or may not include a copyleft or share-alike clause. ―Copyrighted work‖ indicates that international copyright law is the reference to the kinds of content. Thus, for example, patents and trademarks cannot be considered ―open content.‖ The format of distribution refers primarily to the OKD‘s interdiction of DRM, and the DFCW‘s freedom of access to the source material. One area of ambiguity regarding the ―openness‖ of content is whether media such as music and film must include the musical scores in order to be considered ―open‖ or ―free‖; we comment on this point later. ―Unrestricted, royalty-free permission‖ indicates that content that does not permit commercial use or sale is excluded, as is content that restricts domains of usage (e.g. forbidding military or morally objectionable applications). ―Open content‖ might or might not include a copyleft clause that requires derivative works to be licensed under an open content license; the Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike (BY-SA) license is such an license.

Open content licensing As with open source software, the most important part of the institutional infrastructure that permits the existence of the phenomenon is the existence of open content licenses (Okoli and Carillo 2005). The oldest open content ―license‖ is actually not a license: it is releasing works into the public domain. This either occurs automatically after the legal copyright term expires (life of author plus 50 4 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

years in most places, though life plus 70 years in the United States), or by the creator explicitly releasing the work into the public domain. Although not a license, works in the public domain fully qualify as open content according to the OKD or DFCW—with the one exception that no one is required to make the source material available, if applicable. For example, photographs taken in the 19th century might be in the public domain, but the source negatives from which they are printed are generally not available. Note, however, that there is no copyleft provision for works in the public domain—anyone can make modifications and claim full copyright protection on their original portions of the derivative work. The first explicit open content license was the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL or GFDL, http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) , first written by the Free Software Foundation in 1999 as a textual complement of their GNU General Public License (GPL) for free software (Wikipedia contributors 2009a); it was designed mainly as an instrument whereby the documentation accompanying free software would likewise be free. Although it predates the OKD and DFCW, since it was based on their common ancestor in the GNU General Public License, this license qualifies as an Open Knowledge and FCW license, with the added provision of copyleft—those who distribute derivative works licensed by the FDL must likewise release their work under the same license. The second major effort towards licenses for open content has been the spectrum of licenses designed by Creative Commons (CC, http://www.creativecommons.org) (Garcelon 2009). CC licenses all require attribution of the original author (the BY label), but permit users of their licenses to choose among any combination of three optional restrictions: 1. NonCommercial (NC): Works may be restricted to non-commercial usage only. 2. NoDerivs (ND): Distribution of derivative works may be forbidden. 3. ShareAlike (SA): Derivative works, if distributed, may require redistribution under the same license that requires derivative works (copyleft provision). The spirit of CC has been to give content creators a choice in deciding what level of ―openness‖ they desire in distribution their works, ranging from a traditional ―all rights reserved‖ copyright to the strongly ―free‖ mentality of the GNU FDL, or the lack of restriction of public domain. Although we will later comment on some implications of their licenses, we must note that only two CC licenses meet the standards of the OKD and the DFCW: 1. CC-BY: The attribution-only license, that only requires attribution of the original author. This license permits commercial usage, redistribution of derivatives, and imposes no copyleft requirement. 2. CC-BY-SA: the attribution-share alike license, that adds a copyleft requirement to the BY license—this is a permissible restriction under the OKD and the DFCW. It is important to note, though, that although the NonCommercial restriction significantly limits modification and redistribution, it does not forbid it. What it does is effectively require reusers to negotiate terms for royalty payments in the case of redistribution of modified works. (The same could be said to be true of the NoDerivs restriction, though this is typically used when the author has no intention of authorizing modifications of their work under any terms.) Although this is against the spirit of free culture as embodied in the FDL, it is a significant note regarding some categories of redistributable works, such as Open Educational Resources, where the non-commercial restriction does not significantly restrict modifications and community development of works; we discuss this in more detail later. By far the bulk of open content works (as defined by the OKD and DFCW) are licensed under either the FDL, the CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. A few other open content licenses exist, such as Against DRM (http://www.freecreations.org/Against_DRM2.html), designed to forbid use of DRM in information products, and the Free Art License (http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/), targeted to works of art. 5 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

Dimensions of works for open content licensing The theoretical significance of restricting our focus to such a specific definition is that open content has the same legal characteristics as open source software, and thus the theoretical knowledge that has been gathered in OSS literature could be reasonably expected to have some applicability to open content; however, when the license terms change (such as permitting only non-commercial redistribution), then the content is fundamentally different from OSS, and OSS theoretical knowledge cannot be expected to apply. It must be noted, however, that open source software is a very particular kind of work, and has some fundamental characteristics that might not be applicable to all kinds of open content. To help understand the nature of these characteristics of open content, we draw from some past thinking on the subject. In a discussion of the role of traditional copyright laws in contemporary society, Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, described three categories of works with fundamentally different characteristics that would affect the most appropriate copyright licensing terms (Stallman 2002). First, he described ―functional works,‖ where the goal is produce a useful product; ―this includes recipes, computer programs, manuals and textbooks, reference works like dictionaries and encyclopedias‖ (2002, 141); this is the category that includes open source software. Second, he described ―works whose purpose is to say what certain people think‖ (2002, 142), that is, statements of people‘s subjective opinion, such as essays. Third, he described ―aesthetic or entertaining works‖ (2002, 142) such as novels, music, and non-documentary films. In a study of the implications of various Creative Commons licenses, Cheliotis (2009) broadly categorized works as either functional or cultural goods. He described a functional good as one whose goal is to fulfill a consumer‘s practical needs, whereas a cultural good is one that mainly serves to entertain the consumer. Partially based on Stallman‘s three categories and Cheliotis‘ two, we identify two orthogonal dimensions along which works can be classified which yield four distinct categories, with pertinent implications for copyright licensing and for open content development. For our classification, it is helpful to consider works from the perspective of how their value would be assessed or judged. Since the development of a work always strives to meet some sort of quality or value standard, this lens is useful for classifying works with a view towards possible open content development. Relativist versus universalist works The first dimension borrows from Järvinen‘s (2008) taxonomy of information systems research. He distinguishes between the ―value-laden‖ design science paradigm, where certain outcomes are considered more valuable than others, and the ―value-free‖ natural/social science paradigm, where the goal is to ascertain the real and actual state of affairs in the world, with no preference given to any particular outcome. We frame these distinctions based on the philosophical duality of relativism versus universalism. Relativism holds that truths or values are not absolute; they depend on the factors both intrinsic and extrinsic to individuals. Universalism holds that truths or values are universal and absolute, irrespective of the subject or context. We present two dimensions for classifying copyrightable works based on how their quality is judged (that is, a value judgement): works can either be judged based on a relativist assessment of how valuable or worthy of appreciation they are (Järvinen‘s value-laden category), or based on a universalist assessment of how they conform to some universally-held standard (analogous to Järvinen‘s value-free category). Although for purposes of classification we present this dimension as a duality, it should be properly considered a spectrum, with works containing characteristics that might be more or less relativist or universalist.

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Objectively-evaluated versus subjectively-evaluated works Second, there is the consideration of if the value or quality assessment is generally considered an objective judgement, based on highly objective characteristics that do not vary significantly regardless of the quality assessor, or if the assessment is generally considered to be subjective, where it is understood and even accepted that different people would evaluate the work differently based on their own ideologies or personal preferences. Some works are judged based on their artistic or aesthetic merits. Paintings, musical compositions, poetry and fiction are common examples of works that are judged not so much in terms of whether they are right or wrong as much as by whether they are beautiful, ugly, or plain. We label these ―subjectively-evaluated works.‖ The other category consists of works that have an objective criterion for determining their quality: the degree to which they are accurate according to some outside standard of accuracy, or to which they achieve some independently defined goal or purpose. Textbooks, software, encyclopedias, and scientific publications are examples of what we call ―objectively-evaluated works.‖ Works of this category are judged on their accuracy, usefulness, practicability, and other quantifiable, objective criteria of merit or value. This distinction is quite significant in the possibilities of collaboration in an open content project. The direction of a subjectively-evaluated work, such as an open novel, must be agreed upon by the principal authors. Because there is no objective criterion on where a plot should lead, only a very small group of authors (typically just one) would determine the direction of the plot. Arguments about where the storyline should go would be ceaseless otherwise. While contributors could add polished narratives, their collaboration would necessarily be limited. It is important to note, of course, that the openness of content has nothing to do with the creation process: it only relates to the distribution terms of the final product. What makes a novel ―open‖ in this sense is that anyone could take the final novel and then rewrite the plot as they please, and then redistribute their modified version. Even if each new version is written by only one author, such a work is fully open. What we are noting here, however, is that in subjectively-evaluated works, one of the most interesting and important aspects of open content creation—the collaborative creation process—is severely limited by the nature of the works. In the case of objectively-evaluated works, it is much easier to set some objective standard as the goal towards which the work will lead. Most large open source software projects have some sort of published roadmap to guide their developers, just as proprietary software projects do. In the case of Wikipedia, all contributions are guided by the ―founding principles‖ (Wikimedia contributors 2009), that define the organizational and structural policies. The most important of these is probably the principle of ―neutral point of view,‖ which restricts contributions to only objectively verifiable, documented facts. Thus, the encyclopedia is one that does not permit personal opinions (though documented statements of opinions and positions are welcome). Although the system is not perfect, it does permit people with diametrically opposed opinions to collaborate on an article by agreeing on objective facts. The point here is not whether or not Wikipedia successfully achieves its goal of neutrality; it is that having such a defined goal provides an organizational structure under which hundreds of people can contribute to the same encyclopedia article, which is not the case for artistic works. Beyond software and encyclopedias, other objectively-evaluated works have objective criteria which permit common collaboration while minimizing arguments on what should be added or not. For example, open textbooks and educational materials include documented knowledge and open dictionaries include documented usages of words and phrases. As we have noted, objective works permit collaboration in much larger projects than do subjectively-evaluated works. While both categories permit modification and redistribution, the quality benefits of having many concurrent collaborators apply mainly to objectively-evaluated works. While researchers may study either category, those more interested in the communal aspects of collaborative development would generally find more activity in the creation of objectively-evaluated open content. 7 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

Four categories of open content Based on these two dimensions, we have four categories of works. Table 1 summarizes the categories, with examples and preferred Creative Commons licenses based on the nature of the works. Utilitarian works First, we have utilitarian works, which are objectively evaluated according to how well they attain a relativistic value goal. Software (the subject of open source software) falls in this category, since a software program has a definite utility goal, and is judged based on how well it does the job. Even artoriented software such as drawing or video-editing software is utilitarian; it is not judged based on the aesthetic value of the resulting works; the software is judged on how well it enables artists to carry out their creative visions. Other examples in this category are cooking recipes, how-to manuals, engineering designs, architectural blueprints, taxonomies, typologies. These all share the characteristics of their value goal not being to achieve some sort of universalist ―truth,‖ but rather an attempt to be valuable according to some relativistic criteria. Nonetheless, their evaluation of whether or not they attain these relativistic criteria is based on concrete objective criteria. Factual works The second category is factual works, which are objectively evaluated primarily according to how universally true the work is. For such works, there are some absolute truth claims, and the works are evaluated according to these criteria. Wikipedia is in this category, as exemplified by its Neutral Point of View doctrine: the project explicitly forbids statements of opinion, and only authorizes content that can be externally, objectively documented. ―Universal truth‖ in the case of Wikipedia refers to the existence of respectable citations external to Wikipedia of the statement in question. Of Stallman‘s three categories, his first category of ―functional works‖ encompasses both the utilitarian and factual categories we describe here. Among his list of examples cited earlier, recipes and computer programs are utilitarian works, since their value is based on how well they attain some objective standard of being ―valuable‖; manuals, textbooks, and reference works are factual works, since their quality is based on reference to some external, universal standard of what is ―true‖ or ―factual.‖ We will see that these two categories have similar licensing implications, which is probably why Stallman considered them as a unitary category. Referring to what we call utilitarian and factual works, Stallman (2002, 143) says: ―For all these functional works, I believe that the issues are basically the same as they are for software and the same conclusions apply. People should have the freedom even to publish a modified version because it‘s very useful to modify functional works.‖ In other words, he believes that it is appropriate to apply a standard open content license, such as the GFDL, or CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, to such works. Cheliotis (2009) seems to agree that functional goods are generally best served by a CC-BY or a CC-BY-SA license. However, unlike Stallman, he also recognizes that some authors prefer to only permit non-commercial use, modification, or redistribution; thus, he includes CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-NC-SA as suggested licensing terms, even though these do not qualify for our open content definition. Aesthetic works The third category we identify features aesthetic works (Stallman‘s ―aesthetic or entertaining works,‖) where beauty is in the eye of the beholder; these works are subjectively evaluated based on an evaluator‘s relativistic preference of what is valuable or beautiful. This includes music, works of fiction, and most movies. Although aesthetic works are quite different in many ways from utilitarian works, there is a crucial similarity that must be noted. One of the greatest challenges in translating free and open source software licenses into terms that make sense for non-software works is the software concept of source code—human readable instructions from which the actual product (a collection of bits) is 8 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

produced. On one hand, the source code is itself often not usable (except in the case of interpreted programming languages such as JavaScript and PHP) until converted into bits; on the other hand, the executable collection of bits is humanly incomprehensible without the underlying source code. In the case of open content novels or an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, there is no parallel to source code: once a reader receives the usable item (the text), there is no relevant ―source code‖ without which the text cannot be modified. (It could be argued that Wikipedia depends on underlying wiki code, and an e-book might depend on underlying HTML, but neither is necessary for users to make effective modifications to the text.) However, music and film, although they are aesthetic works, have similar challenges as do software. The useful product is a stream of sounds or a combined stream of video and sound. Although the music or video could be clipped and rearranged to compose new works (which cannot be done with binary software), a musician or filmmaker is severely limited in their ability to modify a song or a film without the underlying musical scores or raw video footage. Similarly, a graphic artist is hampered in their ability to modify a graphic image without the underlying layered image file (such as Photoshop PSD or Gimp XCF). These file formats that digitize musical scores (that is, sheet music) or image lagers could be considered the equivalent of the ―source code‖ for these genres of works. However, the challenge is whether a published work should be considered truly ―open‖ in the OKD or DFCW sense if it does not include these underlying formats. Concerning open content licensing of aesthetic works, even Stallman recognizes that there are significant complexities involved: Now for these works, the issue of modification is a very difficult one because on the one hand, there is the idea that these works reflect the vision of an artist and to change them is to mess up that vision. On the other hand, you have the fact that there is the folk process, where a sequence of people modifying a work can sometimes produce a result that is extremely rich. ... It‘s a hard question what we should do about publishing modified versions of an aesthetic or an artistic work, and we might have to look for further subdivisions of the category in order to solve this problem. (Stallman 2002, 144) Cheliotis (2009) argues that for aesthetic works (which he calls ―cultural goods‖), the copyleft provision is not as meaningful: even though an artist may want to permit modification and redistribution of his or her work, it is often not meaningful to reincorporate these modifications into the original work. The artist would usually be content with receiving attribution as the original source of the aesthetic idea, but would generally want to retain the original work intact. Moreover, Cheliotis further argues that the non-commercial restriction is more meaningful for aesthetic works because they are more often exploited without modification than are utilitarian or factual works. A commercial exploiter‘s options are limited if a utilitarian or factual work is protected by a copyleft provision; in this case, although they might exploit the work commercially, they would be required to provide any modifications they might make for free, thus limiting any possibilities of monopolizing someone else‘s work. On the other hand, it is easier for a marketing organization to exploit an aesthetic work better than the artist can themselves; the non-commercial provision assures that the artist shares in the profits. As a result of these complexities, we would expect to see the widest range of licensing options in place with aesthetic works: any of the eight Creative Commons licenses might make sense, as well as the FDL. Opinioned works Finally, we have opinioned works, which make universalistic claims, but such claims are understood to be subjective without an inordinate attempt to objectively evaluate such claims. These include essays, editorials, commentaries, product reviews, religious and philosophical texts. The common theme with these kinds of works is that although they put forth theses or statements that can only be evaluated subjectively, it is of great importance that the work be presented accurately as a faithful representation of the author‘s beliefs or opinions. 9 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

It is somewhat non-intuitive that we consider essays, political theses, and religious texts as universalist works. This is certainly not because we hold their contents to be universally true, nor necessarily even whether the author considers the contents as universally true. Rather, we are focused on a very particular universalist truth claim: whether or not the work is an accurate expression of the author‘s personal opinion, view or perspective. On one hand, the works are subjectively-evaluated: it is up to the author, or those who agree with the author, to determine whether they agree with or like the work. On the other hand, the truth or validity or reliability of the work is not based on the relativist criteria of if the work is useful or beautiful; it is based on the criteria of fidelity to the author‘s actual beliefs or opinions. From another perspective, an author is only satisfied that the work is completed when it accurately and fairly (universalist criteria) expresses what he or she truly feels, thinks or believes (subjective evaluation). Although these works are mostly the expression of one individual, or of a very small number of individuals, one possibly application that might have a more collaborative development model might be a work of textual criticism where the contributors attempt to compile the most accurate version of an ancient manuscript for which various, inconsistent copies exist. This is a significant field of study in classical studies, religion, and history; however, we are not aware of any project that currently employs an open content development model. Nonetheless, in such a scenario, the value of the work would remain the subjective evaluation of the original author‘s perspective, but the validity or accuracy of the final collaborative work would depend on its theoretical fidelity to the missing original, following the well-developed textual criticism techniques. Far from being a minor detail, this categorization has important implications for preferred licensing. Stallman (2002, 142) argues: ―The whole point of those works is that they tell you what somebody thinks or what somebody saw or what somebody believes. To modify them is to misrepresent the authors; so modifying these works is not a socially useful activity. And so verbatim copying is the only thing that people really need to be allowed to do.‖ Thus, even Richard Stallman, the creator of the GPL (for software) and the FDL (for textual content), does not apply such licenses to his own essays; he only permits verbatim copying and redistribution. His typical license for his essays is something to the effect of: ―Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this book provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies‖ (Stallman 2009). The equivalent Creative Commons licenses are CC-BY-ND or CC-BY-NC-ND. Comparison with other classifications Our classification is a finer refinement than that of Stallman and of Cheliotis, providing a clear base for the implications that they draw in their enlightening articles. As we have noted, our classification largely corresponds with Stallman‘s, except that we clearly explain two dimensions that distinguish our four categories; as a result, we subdivide Stallman‘s ―functional works‖ into utilitarian and factual works; our aesthetic and opinioned categories correspond directly to his other two categories. Cheliotis‘ ―functional goods‖ correspond roughly to our objectively-evaluated category (that is, both utilitarian and factual works), whereas his ―cultural goods‖ seems to most closely correspond to our aesthetic category. Although he made a passing reference to opinioned works (―documents expressing diverse personal opinions or political views,‖ 2009, 231), it is unclear where he classifies them in his dual scheme. However, Cheliotis indicated some uncertainty about how to classify certain products under his dual scheme, as the following sentence indicates: ―... content of primarily functional or educational value, like Wikipedia‘s encyclopedic pages; though educational content in particular poses some challenges in terms of our comparison as it is not a tool per se but can be said to have both functional and cultural utility)‖ (2009, 234); this uncertainty is highlighted by his earlier categorization of Wikipedia as a cultural work (―...goods of cultural or entertainment value, as exemplified by the hugely successful Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube and many more online communities) (2009, 229). We 10 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

classify Wikipedia as a factual work, that is an objectively-evaluated (Cheliotis‘ functional category) universalist work; educational works are generally in the same category. We opt to use the term ―objectively-evaluated works‖ instead of Cheliotis‘ ―functional goods,‖ as the word ―functional‖ is very similar to the idea behind ―utilitarian,‖ yet does not make the important distinction between a relativistic evaluation of the value or quality of the work (in the case of utilitarian works) versus a universalistic evaluation (in the case of factual works). Moreover, we avoid his term ―cultural goods‖ because ―cultural‖ is a sufficiently broad and imprecise word that it could justifiably refer to any kind of work; indeed, this is the reasoning behind the word‘s use in the term ―Free Cultural Works.‖ Although we have developed a categorization system that encompasses all kinds of copyrightable works, these works do not always fit so neatly within the four categories. Some works by their very nature combine characteristics from multiple categories at the same time. For example, a documentary film primarily contains content that could either be mainly factual or mainly opinioned, or perhaps a combination of both. (Indeed, the authors of many opinioned works consider them to be factual! However, an author‘s unwillingness to submit their work for revision, whether through traditional or contemporary Internet-based means, is an indication of their work‘s opinioned nature: the author does not want to be misrepresented—a universalistic quality criterion.) However, the accompanying filmography and music would likely be mostly aesthetic. Another example would be an encyclopedia like Wikipedia: the textual content is mostly factual, yet it includes many images. These images would be mainly utilitarian (appropriate to support the accompanying text) or aesthetic (beautiful). And then the organization of the encyclopedia would be a utilitarian design. These two examples should be sufficient to highlight this complexity inherent in many works. It is beyond the scope of this article to flesh out the implications of this important complication; however, it would be helpful for researchers to clearly focus on what sub-element of a work they are studying, and consider the particular characteristics of that element. If they cannot so easily separate these elements in their evaluation (for example, in the case of a documentary film), then the complexity should be noted, and hypotheses should be adapted accordingly. Value assessment

Relativist Universalist

Truth perspective

Category name Examples Preferred licenses Category name

Objective

Subjective

Utilitarian

Aesthetic

Software, recipes, how-to manuals, engineering designs, architectural blueprints, taxonomies, typologies FDL, BY, BY-SA, BY-NC, BY-NC-SA Factual

Fine art, music, literary fiction, poetry, song lyrics, nondocumentary films, photographs, drama, games FDL, BY, BY-SA, BY-ND, BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, BY-NC-ND Opinioned

Textbooks, dictionaries, Essays, editorials, commentaries, encyclopedias (e.g. Wikipedia), product reviews, religious and Examples scientific articles, maps, news philosophical texts reports, educational materials FDL, BY, BY-SA, BY-NC, BY-ND, BY-NC-ND Preferred BY-NC-SA licenses Table 1. Categories of works with open content licensing implications 11 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

Review of scholarly research on open content Cheliotis (2009) rigorously investigated the implications of open content licensing based on the characteristics of the work licensed. We have discussed his open content categorizations in detail, as well as some of his suggestions for licensing various kinds of content. In addition, he proposed decision trees that model authors‘ reasoning in how to license their content and empirically tested them on the distribution of Creative Commons license choices in Flickr, a site where users post and share their photographs. Although his study broadly involved Creative Commons licensing and not only open content, the implications for the open content licenses in his study are quite important. A few scholars have discoursed legal aspects of open content licensing. Liao (2006) traces some of the intellectual property reforms that Western societies have been experiencing (including questioning the ―property‖ aspect of ―intellectual property‖), and encourages Chinese society to aim towards a ―creative da-tong‖ (state of societal prosperity through creativity) by incorporating the emergent open cultures, including open content creation, into its culture and copyright reforms. Armstrong (2010) discusses the legal problems in the United States with open source and open content licenses in light of the American legal restrictions on copyright transfers; the main problem is that American law generally favours authors‘ recovering their rights to reclaim copyright, even if they have transferred them in the past. While admitting that such legal interpretations are designed to protect authors from abusive corporations, he presents the risk that open source and open content licenses could be legally revoked by the authors or by their heirs. Chiao (2010) economically models the difference in caution in redistribution for individuals versus the society in face of possible legal liability issues; he also experiments on optimal team size modularity in open content teams. Certain studies describe specific websites or projects that implement open content models, rather than treating the open content methodology or philosophy. Such projects include the webgis system for an urban planning geographical information system (Budoni et al. 2007); the Digital Universe, an open content encyclopedia that, unlike Wikipedia, uses named experts to create its content (Korman 2006) Schweik et al (2005) suggested that the open source or open content development model could be used to reform various academic practices such as peer review and the collaborative development of scholarly work, which they demonstrate in modeling change in land-use. A very significant subdomain of open content research has treated Open Educational Resources (OER), also known as open courseware, where the goal is to make educational materials available for liberal sharing and cumulative development. Although most OER permits modifications and distributions of derivatives, commercial redistribution is often forbidden. Whereas this disqualifies most OER as Open Knowledge or FCW and limits commercial development, this restriction is of little relevance to most educators, who are mostly interested in use of the educational materials for pedagogic purposes, which are permitted; the restriction against commercial distribution does not affect most of the community that uses and develops OER. Thus, unlike other redistributable works that do not qualify as Open Knowledge or FCW, the implications of open content development are largely applicable in the case of OER as far as the academic community is concerned. Wiley and Gurrell (2009) relate a brief history of open content and open educational resources, highlighting some of the defining moments that defined the course of developments. Downes (2007) discusses various models for providing OER sustainably, especially in the presence of pressures to provide content gratis (that is, at no charge to the user). He presents many perspectives, involving funding models, technical models, content models and staffing models that provide viable possibilities, a number of which have already been successfully deployed. Meyers et al (2008) describe an open content textbook on bioentrepreneurship; a large part of the project‘s motivation was to educate students in 12 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

developing countries. Couros (2006) studied the open culture practices of educators, including their creation and use of open content. Schweik et al (2009) described an online introductory course on geographic information systems which is part of an open content curriculum. Schuwer and Mulder (2009) describe a successful OER initiative carried out by the Dutch Open Universiteit Nederland. An important related aspect of open content that has been widely commented on by scholars is open access. A number of scholars, especially in library science, have commented on the implications of the Open Content Alliance, a consortium established to set a direction for the digitization of copyrighted books and making them available for limited access to the public through libraries and non-commercial providers (Swartz 2007; Dougan 2010). This Alliance is largely a response to Google‘s commercial book digitization efforts (McShane 2008). Ven et al (2008) present libOR, a collection of open content data sets for operations research. While not necessarily open content, open access is of great interest in providing access to knowledge in developing countries (Nwagwu and Ahmed 2009). In addition to discussing open access, Ballantyne (2009) briefly discusses the beginnings of open content licensing in the International Rice Research Institute.

Implications of research on open source software for open content One of the most important applications of our framework is as a basis for developing theoretically-grounded propositions related to open content. There has been an abundance of research conducted on open source software; we do not attempt to conduct a thorough review of the literature here. Nonetheless, here we highlight some of the key findings in some of the leading information systems journals, which tend to be more theory-oriented than software engineering journals, where the bulk of OSS research has been published. In all of these cases, note that open source software is a utilitarian work. Thus, many of the findings might have direct implications for other utilitarian works, such as how-to manuals and recipes; we also note some possible implications for other categories of open content. Table 2 summarizes these implications, demonstrating that although open source software findings are often applicable to open content, they are neither indiscriminately applicable nor are they equally applicable to all categories of open content. Arora et al (2008) found that OSS vendors released software patches for vulnerabilities faster than do proprietary vendors. A vulnerability is an objectively-determined fault in the software. For open content, this would be relevant to utilitarian works (such as software and how-to manuals), where errors result in undesirable functionality, and factual works, where errors might involve factual errors, privacy violations, or publishing of illegal information (such as posting child pornography or anti-government rhetoric, depending on the legal jurisdiction). The implication is that perhaps open content providers are more responsive to repairing errors than are proprietary content providers. However, given the small project teams for aesthetic and opinioned works, we don‘t believe an open content model would make a difference. Raghu et al (2009) found that when OpenOffice.org was presented as an alternative to Microsoft Office, students in an experiment were less willing to pay for Microsoft Office. This important finding indicates that in the presence of open content utilitarian alternatives, proprietary works might diminish in market value. The drop in sales of general reference works in light of gratis content available on the web (both Free Cultural Works and open access) indicates that this finding is very applicable to factual works as well. However, because of the idiosyncratic and subjective nature of aesthetic and opinioned works, we do not expect this finding to have any bearing on these other two categories of works. Hahn et al (2008) found that ―OSS developers prefer joining a project whose initiator has developed a strong tie with them through repeated collaborations and shared administration of past projects. They are also more likely to join a project whose noninitiators have more project experience‖ (2008, 385-386). In addition to being applicable to other utilitarian works, we expect this finding to 13 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

further apply to aesthetic works. Because these two categories are relativistic in their value criteria, it is important that collaborators have a common vision of the goal of the project; past collaborations are a primary way of achieving such a shared vision. However, this finding is probably not applicable to the two universalistic categories, for opposite reasons. For factual works, the objective evaluation criteria substantially reduces the need for close interpersonal relationships in order to productively build towards the common goal of accumulating facts. For opinioned works, if people collaborate at all, it would only be with those with whom they have very close relationships; we don‘t believe that an open content model would change this dynamic in any way. In a study of what factors attract developers to participate in new OSS projects, Stewart et al (2006) found that non-restrictive OSS licenses attract greater user interest; sponsored projects attract greater user interest, and more so for nonmarket sponsors; nonmarket sponsors attract greater development activity; however, restrictive licenses did not attract greater development activity. We believe this finding would hold for almost categories of works: mostly to utilitarian and factual; and to a lesser extent for aesthetic works, because we predict that this category has generally smaller team sizes than do the other categories. However, as with our implications from Hahn et al‘s (2008) study also related to the joining of projects, we do not expect that an open content model would have any effect on project joining for opinioned works. In investigating OSS project success factors, Stewart and Gosain (2006) found that affective trust was positively related to OSS team size and effort; cognitive trust was not. Various aspects of OSS ideology were positively related to both cognitive and affective trust; however, freedom beliefs were negatively related to cognitive trust. Team effort and communication quality was positively related to task completion, but team size was not. Collaborative OSS values were positively related to communication quality. Because these findings relate to the operation of teams once they are formed, we believe they would be generally applicable for all categories except for opinioned works, where most of the work done is either individual or in very small teams. Because aesthetic works generally operate with much smaller teams than do utilitarian and factual works, we don‘t expect Stewart and Gosain‘s findings related to team size to be applicable; however, the other findings should be. Feller et al (2008) found that in open source service networks, the facilitating of coordination and the safeguarding of exchanges between commercial vendors and the OSS development community enables access to, and transfer of, strategic resources. A shared macroculture and collective sanctions facilitates the coordination of exchanges; collective sanctions facilitates the safeguarding of exchanges. Because of the nascent nature of open content, there are no open content service networks currently in existent that are comparable to the subjects of Feller et al‘s study. Because the dynamics of any such future exchanges are highly idiosyncratic to the nature of the work (Feller et al studied networks within the software development industry), we don‘t believe that we could generalize their findings to other categories of open content. In studying ―opensourcing,‖ a deliberate strategy of releasing a previously proprietary product as open source, Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald (2008) found that, for a successful relationship, the opensourcer (―customer‖, the company that implements opensourcing) must not seek to dominate and control the process; must provide professional management and business expertise; and must help establish an open and trusted ecosystem. The open source community must have a clear and democratic authority structure with transparent processes; must have a responsible and innovative attitude; and must help establish a professional and sustainable ecosystem. Although there are numerous cases in the Internet age of content providers releasing their work as gratis content, we don‘t know of any case other than with software of their releasing it for public open content development. We don‘t consider this very meaningful for subjectively-evaluated (aesthetic and opinioned) works, for two reasons: First, such works are typically created with small teams where the subjective evaluation criteria can be more easily agreed upon; thus, it doesn‘t make sense to release them to a large community for development. 14 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

Secondly, the creation of these works tend to be finite projects that have a definite ending with a limited number of revisions. Thus, a content owner would not need to develop a long-term relationship with the public. In contrast, even though there are no current examples, we would consider that the ―opensourcing‖ model could be effective for both utilitarian and factual works, where crowdsourcing of large segments of the public could result in higher quality works—it would be worthwhile to expend the effort to build good relationships with the public. OSS article and findings Arora et al (2008): OSS vendors released patches faster

Raghu et al (2009): In presence of OSS alternative, willingness to pay for proprietary software dropped Hahn et al (2008): Developers prefer joining a project when they have past relationships with initiator, and other members are more experienced Stewart et al (2006): Non-restrictive OSS licenses and sponsored projects attract greater user interest; nonmarket sponsors attract greater development activity; restrictive licenses did not attract greater development activity Stewart and Gosain (2006): Affective trust positively related to team size and effort; cognitive trust was not; freedom ideology negatively related to cognitive trust; team effort and communication quality positively related to task completion; team size was not. Feller et al (2008): Shared macroculture and collective sanctions facilitates the coordination of exchanges in open source service networks; collective sanctions facilitates the safeguarding of exchanges Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald (2008): Opensourcer must not seek to dominate the process; must provide business expertise; must help establish trusted ecosystem. OSS community must have democratic authority structure; must have responsible and innovative attitude; must help establish

Implications for open content development Utilitarian Factual Aesthetic Opinioned Yes (errors are Yes (errors are No (small No (small undesireable factual errors teams) teams) functionally) or policy violations) Yes (gratis Yes (gratis No No substitute) substitute) (idiosyncratic) (idiosyncratic) Yes (working relationships matter)

Yes (working relationships matter)

No (most work is individual)

Yes (sponsorship matters)

No (content quality is mostly objective) Yes (sponsorship matters)

Yes (sponsorship matters)

No (highly idiosyncratic)

Yes (teambased work)

Yes (teambased work)

Yes (team-based work)

No (most work is individual)

? (finding idiosyncratic to software industry)

? (finding idiosyncratic to software industry)

? (finding idiosyncratic to software industry)

? (finding idiosyncratic to software industry)

Yes (relationship with community matters)

Yes (relationship with community matters)

No (project teams are small)

No (project teams are small)

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sustainable ecosystem

Table 2: Proposed implications of some OSS research findings for open content development

Theoretical background for specific research directions This research program draws from multiple research domains, some of which have already established an extensive body of literature over the years (i.e., open source software and marketing of digital products; for reviews, see (i.e., open source software and marketing of digital products; for reviews, see Peitz and Waelbroeck 2006; and Feller and Brian Fitzgerald 2001), while others are emerging fields that have recently received considerable attention (i.e., Web 2.0, user-generated content, and wikis; see Kane and Fichman 2009). Here, we describe the theoretical approach of the studies on the quality outcomes of open content products and on the marketing outcomes of open content. In addition, we discuss some initial directions in research on open content in developing countries. The quality of open content products Guimaraes et al (2007) found that the quality of an information system positively affects its use, job impact on users, and the benefits they derive from the system. Although here we are concerned with information products rather than with information systems per se, this finding is nonetheless relevant since the open content development model is mostly directed at producing information products of a certain quality with the hope that consumers would use the products for their various goals. Because of the novelty of the area, there is relatively little literature on the quality of open content products in general (other than Wikipedia, which we discuss shortly). The main theoretical streams that have some bearing on this area include work on information systems quality. Among this, literature there some studies that might have some relevance to open content quality. Kahn et al (2002) have developed benchmarks for assessing information quality, which is one important aspect of information product quality. Jøsang et al (2007) synthesized a framework of trust and reputation systems that have been employed to evaluate and signal the quality of information products. Moe (2009) found that customer ratings and word-of-mouth affect the sales of good quality information products, but have little effect on sales of poor quality products (whose sales remain low regardless). Although related more specifically to website design quality, Cyr (2008) found that trust positively affects a site visitor‘s intention to return to the website. For website-based open content such as Wikipedia, such trust indicates a key aspect of readers‘ perception of the resource‘s quality and usefulness. Not surprisingly, considering the recent nature of the field of research, the only scholarly work thus far conducted on the quality of non-software open content products has been the extensive body of research that has attempted to evaluate the reliability of Wikipedia, variously expressed as its trustworthiness, quality, or accuracy. In other words, why trust the contents of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit? We have already covered some of these studies in other work (Okoli 2009); we repeat our discussions here with a few additional comments. An early scholarly assessment of Wikipedia is a comparison of selected science articles in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica conducted by Nature journal (Giles 2005). The study found Wikipedia‘s accuracy comparable to those of Britannica. Among 42 articles, Wikipedia had an average of four errors each, and Britannica had three. In spite of this early favourable Nature study, most of the studies of Wikipedia‘s reliability have judged it unfavourably. Denning et al (2005) question whether Wikipedia‘s collaborative editing process is capable of producing accurate and authoritative information on a thoroughly comprehensive scope of human knowledge. Gorman (2007) contends that Wikipedia has no basis to call itself an encyclopedia, and that without regulation of its article-writing process, its information is unreliable. Fiedler (2008) 16 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

discusses a well-publicized case of a prank entry of John Seigenthaler, Sr., a famous journalist, implicating him in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy (Wikipedia contributors 2008a). This false information remained on Wikipedia for over four months before being discovered. It has become a strong warning against the weakness of a major public information source ―that anyone can edit.‖ Svoboda (2006) discusses various criticisms that some scholars have levied against Wikipedia. They contend that in spite of the attempts of some Wikipedians to provide quality control, the lack of formal controls results in the lowest quality contributions prevailing, with unclear standards of accuracy or writing quality. Waters (2007) contends that Wikipedia articles are at best a sum of thousands of opinions; this process, he says, could not logically result in articles of quality. In contrast to the negative tone taken by many other studies, when Arter (2005) came across the article on ―Auditing‖ and found it lacking information, he went ahead and filled in missing information to make the article more complete. This is in contrast to some other reviewers of Wikipedia who criticize its shortcomings rather than quickly applying the wiki concept to bring the encyclopedia more up to standard. Thus, by the end of his experience, Arter had no substantive criticism of the article on ―Auditing‖—this approach of resolving Wikipedia‘s weaknesses by correcting them directly is the very heart of Wikipedia. Ironically, whereas most of the general review articles and those that assessed Wikipedia‘s reliability have expressed strong doubts about its reliability, all the studies that have scrutinized Wikipedia from an epistemological perspective have strongly validated its epistemic qualities as a valuable source of knowledge (Schiltz, Truyen, and Coppens 2007). Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, is ―a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge‖ (Wikipedia contributors 2008b). A definite sub-stream of research has begun that explores Wikipedia as an epistemological phenomenon, examining how Wikipedia and related phenomena affect and shape people‘s consciousness of how they know what they believe they know. This contrast in evaluation between classical views of knowledge and an epistemological re-evaluation suggests that Wikipedia represents a significant shift in how knowledge is evaluated and received, a shift of ―seismic‖ proportions (Dede 2008). Fallis (2008) presented a compelling case for the reliability of Wikipedia. He highlighted the epistemic problems with comparing Wikipedia with some conceptually ―absolute‖ sources of knowledge, such as direct evaluation by experts. He argued that it is rather more meaningful to judge the reliability of Wikipedia by comparing it with other encyclopedias such as Britannica. With such a criteria, he argued that Wikipedia has been repeatedly shown to be quite reliable (Giles 2005). Moreover, when compared to its more likely alternate sources on the Web, Wikipedia is strikingly superior as a source of knowledge (Magnus 2006). He argued that Wikipedia has important epistemological properties (―e.g., power, speed, and fecundity‖) that offset its shortcomings, and thus is an important source of knowledge today. Dede (2008) considered Wikipedia as the epitome of Web 2.0, one of whose defining characteristics he considered to be ―a shift from the presentation of material by Web site providers to the active co-construction of resources by communities of contributors.‖ He contrasted the epistemologies of the classical knowledge model of knowledge creation by experts with that of knowledge created by consensus of a community of contributors, proposing that various Web communities present epistemologies between these two extremes. Eijkman (2008) taking a perspective very similar to Dede‘s (2008), argued that Web 2.0 presents a ―non-foundational‖ model of learning and knowledge, in contrast to the classical ―foundational‖ perspective. He argues that educators need to broaden their perspective on the epistemological basis of student learning, in order to appreciate the need and value of their being accultured into the emerging knowledge landscape that Web 2.0 presents. Matychak (2008) argued that rather than nullifying the concept of truth, Web 2.0 applications like Wikipedia generates knowledge from groups of people spanning various social, economic, and geographic strata that were previously excluded from the knowledge market, providing a democratic landscape for knowledge creation and dissemination. 17 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

Although they take a software engineering approach on the design of systems, Garud et al‘s (2008) study on designing systems with a view to incomplete specifications has significant epistemological implications. They argue that when designing moving targets such as open source software and open content projects like Wikipedia, designers ought not insist on planning out a completed system; they need to target a moving target, a system which at any point in realization of its development is incomplete. The epistemological implication is that knowledge should not only be seen as the way to ascertain an absolute truth, but rather a process of discovery which is never completed. Wikipedia is quite amenable to this view of the nature of knowledge. These contrasting studies, along with others in a similar vein, provide base material for a systematic literature review on the reliability of Wikipedia, which is one of the main studies in this research program. Although Wikipedia as an encyclopedia is only one very particular kind of open content product, as the only non-software product whose quality has thus far been studied, it is important and relevant to rigorously synthesize the knowledge from this stream of research in order to draw up implications for other kinds of open content. Marketing of digital music For studying the market outcomes of open content, the only well-developed commercial marketplace so far is for digital music. Thus, we will study how open content licensing of digital music affects the market outcomes (revenue from sales and number of sales). The bulk of scholarly research on the marketing effects of digital music has focused on the effects of piracy (refer to Peitz and Waelbroeck 2006 for a review). For example, Sundararajan (2004) explored a seller‘s options in digital rights management (DRM) controls and tiered pricing strategies in order to maximize revenues at varying degrees of piracy. In addition, Chellappa and Shivendu (2005) proposed pricing strategies for digital experience goods (such as music) where consumers don‘t know how much they really value the good until they‘ve sampled it (whether legally or illegally). Most musicians who have distributed their music through traditional means in the past continue to prefer digital distribution channels that control downloading and distribution through digital rights management (DRM). The piracy literature is of particular concern to these musicians, as the Internet has facilitated piracy of their digitized works in ways that have never before been so economically feasible. Some more recent studies focus more on alternative distribution models than on piracy per se. Sinha et al (2010) studied a recent trend of online music sellers to provide music free of DRM. They found that this strategy converts some potential pirates into paying customers. However, DRM-free music is not necessarily open content; indeed, their study does not concern open content at all, since piracy is still an issue. Doerr et al (2010) investigate the characteristics of streaming music services on customers‘ perceived value from digital music and on their willingness to pay for it. However, streaming music is not open content; customers are not authorized to save the music, and certainly not to redistribute it. Iyengar (2010) compared various pricing plans for digital music, and found that customers derive greater value from à la carte pricing models than from subscription-based pricing. However, again, the music services he studied do not authorize redistribution of the music. In contrast , an increasing number of newer musicians are willing to distribute their work with licenses that authorize free downloading and redistribution, without guaranteed economic returns. Open content and Creative Commons licensing expressly obviates piracy by authorizing gratis downloading and redistribution of digital products. A number of online outlets have arisen to serve such musicians by helping consumers find and obtain their music. Magnatune is an online record label that only accepts carefully screened music, but both sells it as a regular digital music distributor and makes it available for non-commercial use only under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial -ShareAlike license. Jamendo distributes digital music licensed by any Creative Commons license of the musician‘s choice; it does not screen submissions. Like Magnatune, it provides full music licensing services, depending on the license terms. ccMixter is a website focused on music modification (that is, creation of 18 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

digital works). It does not sell music, but rather provides music to the musician community with Creative Commons licenses that authorize remixing and distribution of derivatives. There has been very little research that has addressed distribution issues related to music that is licensed for distribution in ways that obviate piracy. One study that has possible implications on open content is Smith and Telang‘s (2009) finding that free over-the-air movie broadcasts increased both legal sales of DVDs of the movie and illegal torrent downloads at the same time. This finding suggests that even in the presence of piracy, providing a one-time free (that is, gratis) alternative could increase revenue from sales. Although the one-time nature of a TV broadcast limits the applicability of this finding to open content, it does imply that a gratis distribution channel can simultaneously increase paid sales. We have been unable to find any studies as of yet that considers the effects on digital music distribution under licenses where redistribution is in fact legal. This proposed study breaks new theoretical ground in investigating an increasingly popular solution to the piracy problem: cases where the musician is willing to authorize redistribution of their work. As described below in the research methodology section, the study would investigate the effects of this distribution approach on the same outcomes of concern in the piracy literature: the extent of distribution of the music, consumers‘ willingness to pay, and the total economic returns for the distributed work (which would be roughly a product of the extent of distribution and consumers‘ willingness to pay). Open content in developing countries Although open source software arose in developed nations, as have virtually all information technologies, there has been much attention given to its promising benefits for the development of the domestic software industries of developing countries. A number of reports have been commissioned by governmental and non-governmental agencies on the general subject of information and communication technology (ICT) for development; many of these mention the role of open source software (Weerawarana and Weeratunga 2004; Giancarlo Nuti Stefanuto and Sergio Salles-Filho 2005; Bannerman 2007). The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (2007), in their annual report on science and technology for development, described the value of open source software in building the native capacity for innovation within countries that foster this model of software development. However, they mainly focused on the open content extrapolation of the open source model to various applications of open innovation, where various enterprises in an industry collaborate with each other and with consumers to collectively develop business and engineering solutions to common problems and challenges. Thus, there is significant potential for the development of non-software open content to be beneficial for developing countries. This section reviews the nascent scholarly work in this area. Marsden (2007) reported on hacking of bicycles that he observed in Zambia and Malawi, modifying their factory-built functionality. Although he referred to this as ―open source bicycles,‖ it is better considered as an application of the open content phenomenon to the development of bicycles. However, it is unclear from his report what the legal status of such hacking might be. Informal, unauthorized hacking of purchased equipment is universally common (often called ―modding‖), such as in modifying video games and video game consoles to run new games or other software that was not originally intended (Wikipedia contributors 2008c). Doctor‘s (Doctor 2007; Doctor 2008; 2008) studies on open source platforms for building digital repositories and digital libraries in India merged open source software with open content, since the software platform naturally used the same development philosophy as the information product that was developed upon it. While there is no technical necessity for the platform for open content development to be open source, it is natural that those who are accustomed to working within the flexible parameters 19 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

of open content would want a software platform for development that is equally flexible. This is the case with Wikipedia, where an open source wiki software platform (MediaWiki) was custom-built to serve the needs of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is noteworthy as the world‘s largest non-software open content project. Similar issues that face the use and development of OSS in developing countries face the use and development of Wikipedia by citizens of developing countries, particularly in the non-European language versions of Wikipedia. However, there has not yet been any scholarly journal article that has treated Wikipedia in developing countries. Devouard (2005) presented the Wikimedia Foundation‘s (http://www.wikimedia.org) goal of helping to build ―a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.‖ The Foundation‘s primary thrust in this area is in sponsoring and fostering the development of Wikipedia. However, she pointed out that due to low access of the Internet, low literacy, and low capability in European languages, a majority of world citizens, particularly in Africa, are practically excluded from this access. She laid out the Foundation‘s plans for achieving access to this open content participation for Africans by various means ―such as DVDs (free or for a small fee), USB key, OLPC (One Laptop per child) computers, books, etc.‖ (Ola Abd El-Tawab 2008). Other initiatives supported by interested third-parties include the production and distribution of offline versions of Wikipedia on CDs, particularly in non-English African languages (Geekcorps Mali 2008). The Wikimedia Foundation is presently engaged in an active campaign to raise international awareness of the benefits of promoting participation and access of its open content projects to citizens of developing countries (Wikia contributors 2008). Hopefully, as Wikipedia becomes more diffused in developing countries, it will attract scholarly attention to understand how open content in general can benefit developing countries.

Importance, originality, and contribution of the research program Importance: It is important to frame the theoretical knowledge base that contributes understanding to the open content model, to evaluate the quality of its resulting products, and to evaluate the benefits of such a production model to its producers. The existing research on open source software has only considered its traditional role in software development. However, the same open source philosophy can be applied to the collaborative creation of non-software information products, such as encyclopedias, books, and dictionaries. In these areas, the open content development model might have much greater potential of significant societal impact because it is not restricted to the domain of highlytrained specialists, as in the case the software developers who contribute to open source software. On the contrary, any literate person with an Internet connection can contribute to Wikipedia. Whereas certain kinds of open content will always require special skills for contribution (such as open music and open video), such skills are much more widely dispersed among the general population than are software development skills, which promises much broader participation. Moreover, considering the increasing concern about piracy of digital goods, it is very important to investigate the effectiveness of open content licensing as a solution to content producers‘ concerns. Originality: This program is the first to comprehensively study the application of open source software development principles to non-software digital products, including evaluating the quality of such products, and their outcomes for producers. First, this program is unique in seeking to leverage the proven value of the open source model to obtain deep, theory-based knowledge about the nascent open content applications. Second, although Wikipedia is widely hailed as a modern wonder, this program seeks to rigorously evaluate its quality claims under objective, rigorous scholarly criteria. While it would be by no means the first study of Wikipedia‘s quality, the systematic literature review methodology can rigorously provide authoritative insight to how to evaluate the quality of this open content exemplar. Finally, this program proposes the first study to rigorously evaluate the benefits of the open content 20 Sprouts - http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-64

model to producers, considering varying degrees of licensing ―openness‖ in order to recommend best practices, depending on their preferences for widespread distribution or for economic returns. Contribution: In addition to the contributions implicit in the preceding sections on Importance and Originality, this research program would offer significant contributions to researchers and to practitioners. For research, it would synthesize key theoretical findings from the extensive research on open source software to provide a framework for research on the nascent open content phenomenon, which has only recently started receiving serious scholarly attention (Cheliotis 2009). It would carefully identify the theoretical characteristics of Wikipedia which cause it to fail or succeed, as a basis for understanding other kinds of open content; more theory-focused researchers have already demonstrated an interest in theoretical research on Wikipedia (Kane and Fichman 2009). It would develop theoretical bases for different kinds of open content licenses, and explain their various market-related outcomes. For practice, this program would provide a critical lens for evaluating Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. It would distil key lessons from Wikipedia for the design of other kinds of open content. It would guide open content creators in their licensing decisions, based on their desired outcomes. It would provide a sound basis for deciding on open content and related licensing options as an approach to dealing with digital piracy. This article provides a justification for considering open content as a scholarly focus of study. Open content is important as a new direction in the availability of information products. Just as open source software has become such a dominant force in the software landscape, open content is increasingly becoming a dominant force in all the media it touches. Both subjectively-evaluated content, such as open music, poetry, fiction, and video, and objectively-evaluated content, such as maps, GPS navigation systems, and courseware, are gaining increasing importance. We encourage researchers to focus attention on this increasingly important domain of our information society, and to take advantage of the accessibility and relevance of the available data.

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Working Papers on Information Systems | ISSN 1535-6078 Editors: Michel Avital, University of Amsterdam Kevin Crowston, Syracuse University Advisory Board:

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Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University Roger Clarke, Australian National University Sue Conger, University of Dallas Marco De Marco, Universita’ Cattolica di Milano Guy Fitzgerald, Brunel University Rudy Hirschheim, Louisiana State University Blake Ives, University of Houston Sirkka Jarvenpaa, University of Texas at Austin John King, University of Michigan Rik Maes, University of Amsterdam Dan Robey, Georgia State University Frantz Rowe, University of Nantes Detmar Straub, Georgia State University Richard T. Watson, University of Georgia Ron Weber, Monash University Kwok Kee Wei, City University of Hong Kong

Margunn Aanestad, University of Oslo Steven Alter, University of San Francisco Egon Berghout, University of Groningen Bo-Christer Bjork, Hanken School of Economics Tony Bryant, Leeds Metropolitan University Erran Carmel, American University Kieran Conboy, National U. of Ireland Galway Jan Damsgaard, Copenhagen Business School Robert Davison, City University of Hong Kong Guido Dedene, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Alan Dennis, Indiana University Brian Fitzgerald, University of Limerick Ole Hanseth, University of Oslo Ola Henfridsson, Viktoria Institute Sid Huff, Victoria University of Wellington Ard Huizing, University of Amsterdam Lucas Introna, Lancaster University Panos Ipeirotis, New York University Robert Mason, University of Washington John Mooney, Pepperdine University Steve Sawyer, Pennsylvania State University Virpi Tuunainen, Helsinki School of Economics Francesco Virili, Universita' degli Studi di Cassino

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