Understanding the Development of Free E-Commerce/E-Business Software: A Resource-Based View

This paper seeks to identify and characterize the array of social and technical resources needed to support the development of open source software supporting E-Commerce (EC) or E-Business (EB) capabilities. This entails a case study within a virtual organization that has undertaken an organizational initiative to develop, deploy, and support free/open source software systems for EC or EB services, like those supporting Enterprise Resource Planning. The objective of this paper is to identify and characterize the resource-based software product development capabilities that lie at the center of the initiative, rather than the software itself, or the effectiveness of its operation in a business enterprise.