The presentation went well. People with no previous exposure to the concept of open source and free software seemed to understand what the hell I was saying. That's a good thing (tm).

The difficult part as expected is the challenges the Open source/Free software standard lays down for a resource based view. There are lots of measurement issues and conceptual issues. For example the traditional financial measures dont' apply and the notion of sustainable comptetive advantage doesn't exactly fit. This was a stumbling block for a few people.

However I think the issues are more to do with the traditional application of strategic management to firms. The default setting is to use financial measures of performance. I have to now make an integrated and robust set of non-financial measures of OSSD project 'performance'.

On the sustainable competitive advantage front I need to present the argument by going back into the fundamentals of the assumptions of a resource based view. This means the inclusion of arguments that address maximising behaviour, gift relationships, welfare economics and transaction-cost economics.

There are still many issues and problems dangling around. I still need to work on getting a sample but before that knowing if I can get a decent sample. Measurement issues will be a big concern with trying to test a set of hypotheses.

For now I need to write up a comprehensive literature review of the resource-based view with a focus on OSSD.