Les logiciels libres : une forme marchande ou une nouvelle hybridation organisationnelle

Abstract

Resorting to Market, to Hierarchy or to Outsourcing is an analytical subject largely debated in literature. Downloading, Buying, Insourcing or Outsourcing software remains as an organizational dilemma forming an analytical triple of the question of sourcing. This organizational substitutability offers since more than one decade an inter-commutable solution facing new applications needs. For new software form’s called free-software or open source software, the situation can be in a way changed. Instead of resorting to market solutions habitually chosen by firms or internalizing software project drawing on internal services or just as entrust an external specialized provider with this project; with free software we can observe a new hybrid organization between market and hierarchy that is not due to market relationships neither to voluntary subordination relationships’ nor to hybrid relationships of inter-firms cooperation. It is about new form by witch a firm downloads software characterizing by ability to acceding to its source code. This step allows reorganizing its functionalities according to firm needs. So this paper aims to interrogate about this new application area in a form part of the problematic of sourcing known since a long time in order to place the relationships between the one proposing free software in the virtual world and the one modifying it as an internal party belonged to a firm.