The Promise of Research on Open Source Software

– Motivations of open source software contributors – Governance, organization, and process of innovation in OSS projects – Competitive dynamic enforced by OSS 3 Why OSS is important to be studied? • Research on OSS is helping to define an entirely new model of innovation of relevance to many fields beyond OSS. • This model helps us understand how private needs and wants can create public good innovations of major importance to the society and the economy 4 The OSS innovation • User-oriented incentives • Community that creates and keeps innovation in common • Low cost project coordination mechanisms • Negligible out-of-pocket expenses in diffusing the innovation • Can apply beyond software development – Art – Biomedical and life science 5 Motivations for contributiors 1 • Individual incentives – Fun, enjoyment, reputation building, learning, and the private use value of the software being developed – Signaling to prospective employers about their programming skills – Private-collective model of innovation incentives • Private investment on innovation to get profit vs. Publish innvoation into a common pool • Software users rather than the manufacturer are typical innovators • Innovators freely reveal the software developed at their private expense 6 Motivations for contributiors 2 • Impact of firm's participation on individual motives – Developers' motivates are related in complex ways – Paid developers are motivated more strongly by status in the project than by the pure use value of the software 7 • Impact of community participation on individual motives – Linux contributors are motivated by: • pragmatic wishes to improve their own software • group-related factors, e.g. their perceived indispensability for the team which they are working – A combination of social and psychological variables explain Linux User Group member participation Motivations for contributiors 3 8 • Relationship between incentives and technical design – Developers who were capable of changing the technical characteristics of the software were significantly more satisfied than noninnovating software users Motivations for contributiors 4