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Open source software (OSS), a form of Digital or Knowledge Commons, underlies much of the technology that we use in our daily lives. The existence and continuation of OSS relies on the contribution of private resources – personal time, volunteer energy, and effort of numerous actors (e.g., software developers’ time as a common-pool resource) – to public goods, the benefits of which are enjoyed by everyone. Nonprofit organizations such as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) attempt to aid this process by providing various collective services to OSS projects, acting as a second-order actor in the production of the public good. To this end, the ASF Incubator has created policies – essentially rules or norms – that serve to protect its interests and, as they say, increase the sustainability of the projects. Each policy requires investment by ASF (in terms of money or the use of volunteer time) or an incubating project (in terms of taking project personnel time), the benefits of which can accrue to either party. Such policies may impose additional costs on incubating projects, leading to a decreased production of the OSS public good. Using the ASF Incubator policy documents, we construct a dataset that records who – ASF or an incubating project – bears the cost and who enjoys the benefit of each policy and procedure. We can code most policy statements as costing one party and benefiting one party. The distribution of costs and benefits according to party indicates whether the second-order actor is contributing to an increase in the public good and if they are doing so sustainably. Through a two-way ANOVA, we characterize the impact of ASF policies on the production of public goods (OSS). Being a part of ASF imposes some costs on projects, but these costs may make projects more sustainable. Our analysis shows that the distribution of costs and benefits is fairly symmetric between the ASF and incubating projects. Thus, the configuration of policies or the “institutional design” of the ASF could aid in producing the OSS public good by providing services that projects require.
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This content will become publicly available on August 20, 2026
Combining Text‐Based Institutional Network and Cost–Benefit Methods to Advance Policy Design Analysis: An Illustrative Application to Nonprofit Open‐Source Software Incubation
ABSTRACT Institutional arrangements that guide collective action between entities create benefits and burdens for collaborating entities and can encourage cooperation or create coordination dilemmas. There is an abundance of research in public policy, public administration, and nonprofit management on cross‐sector alliances, co‐production, and collaborative networks. We contribute to advancing this research by introducing a methodological approach that combines two text‐based methods: institutional network analysis and cost–benefit analysis. We utilize the Institutional Grammar to code policy documents that govern relationships between actors. The coded text is then used to identify Networks of Prescribed Interactions to analyze institutional relationships between policy actors. We then utilize the coded text in a cost–benefit analysis to assess benefit and burden distributive effects. This integrated methodological framework provides researchers with a tool to elucidate both the institutional patterns of interaction and distributive implications embedded in policy documents, revealing insights that single‐method approaches cannot capture. We then utilize the coded text in a cost–benefit analysis to assess benefit and burden distributive effects. This integrated methodological framework provides researchers with a tool to elucidate both the institutional patterns of interaction and distributive implications embedded in policy documents, revealing insights that single‐method approaches cannot capture. To demonstrate the utility of this integrated approach, we examine the policy design of two nonprofit open‐source software (OSS) incubation programs with contrasting characteristics: the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). We select these cases because: (1) they are co‐production alliances and have policy documents that articulate support for collective action; (2) their policy documents and group discussions are open access, creating an opportunity to advance text‐based policy analysis methods; and (3) they represent juxtaposed examples of high and low risk for collaboration settings, thereby providing two illustrative cases of the combined network and cost–benefit text‐based methodological approach. The network analysis finds that ASF policies, as a high‐risk setting, emphasize bonding structures, particularly higher reciprocity, which creates a context for cooperation. OSGeo, a low‐risk setting, has policies creating a context for bridging structures, evident in high brokerage efficiency, to facilitate coordination. The cost–benefit analysis finds that ASF policies balance the distribution of costs and benefits between ASF and projects, while in OSGeo, projects bear both costs and benefits. These findings demonstrate that the combination of network and cost–benefit analysis is an effective tool for utilizing text to compare policy designs.
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- PAR ID:
- 10629688
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Policy Studies Journal
- ISSN:
- 0190-292X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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