Creating Company-Led Open Source Consortia

This thesis focuses on company-led open source (OS) consortia. Unlike community-led open source communities, company-led OS consortia are led by companies or organizations. Driver members of these consortia may include information technology firms or end-user companies from industries beyond the software sector. The objectives of this thesis are to identify the characteristics of company-led OS consortia, examine the motives of organizations for joining such consortia, and outline practices for successful collaboration. To analyze these aspects, we distinguish between two types of company-led OS consortia: user-led open source consortia and vendor-led open source consortia. This thesis is based on the synthesis of four studies conducted by the author in collaboration with co-authors and published between 2022 and 2025. These studies include a systematic literature review on user-led OS consortia; a single-case case study on user-led OS consortia, focusing on the openMDM consortium; a single-case case study on vendor-led OS consortia, focusing on the LF Edge consortium, and a multiple-case case study on both user- led and vendor-led OS consortia. The key contributions of this thesis include establishing a terminology for company-led OS consortia, defining the main characteristics of user-led and vendor-led OS consortia, identifying the motivations behind company involvement in these consortia, and determining 90 practices across 26 different contexts to support the success of company-led OS consortia.