The Knowledge Ecology of Open-Source Software Projects

In this paper we characterize the processes of knowledge making in open-source software projects as an ecology of agents, artifacts, rules, resources, activities, practices and interactions. In order to grasp its dynamic features we consider open-source software projects as interactive systems based on dense interactions between humans and technical artifacts within electronic media. Technology, rather than formal or informal organization, embodies most of the conditions for governance in open-source software projects, hence becoming a critical pathway to the understanding of collective task accomplishment, coordination and knowledge making processes. Based on an in-depth analysis of two open-source software projects, we examine three kinds of artifacts, respectively inscribing technical, organizational, and institutional knowledge. The artifacts are 'dynamic vehicles' that make knowledge creation, accumulation, and dissemination possible by circulating throughout the Internet. For each of them we describe the different activities and the network dynamics in which they are embedded. Our preliminary findings support the ecological view, that the contradictory requirements of innovation and stability in project-based knowledge making are balanced by mechanisms of variation, selection, and stabilization. Index