The Free/Open Source software (F/OSS) phenomenon has shown a considerable degree of vitality and dynamism in recent years; so much vitality and dynamism, in fact, to deserve the qualification of new institution for knowledge creation. This workshop will review the most salient aspects of the phenomenon from a multidisciplinary perspective, exploring (a) the nature of and the interplay among the relevant actors’ motivations and the way these sustain the F/OSS institutional structure; (b) the governance of F/OSS projects; (c) the cooperative and competitive relationships linking F/OSS communities to commercial actors; (d) intellectual property-related issues; and (e) the debate on the opportunity of providing various forms of government support to F/OSS development. The presentation will aim at opening up the discussion on the viability of F/OSS-like institutional arrangements for domains of knowledge creation different from software.

Is there any such thing as a "law and economics methodology"? The workshop will attempt to tackle this difficult question by taking a journey through the variety of different issues and approaches that have been qualified as belonging to the Law and Economics realm. As it happens, the journey will lead us to find on the way more new questions than good answers...