Open, But How Much? Growth,Conflict, and Institutional Evolution in Open‐Source Communities 1
Open, But How Much? Growth,Conflict, and Institutional Evolution in Open‐Source Communities 1
If ‘open source’ is taken as a practice employed in organizing human knowledge-related activities, it may be applied more broadly than just with software. Wherever it is used this chapter contends that processes of negotiation and governance will emerge as means to deal with conflicting interests and visions of community purpose (or epistemic identity). A variety of possible institutional designs for these negotiation and governance processes are possible and each will be tested by the problems of sustaining participation, the growth of the community to include more diverse participants and contests over the paths of development of collective effort. These designs and their subsequent tests are examined empirically for the Debian open source software distribution and Wikipedia open source encyclopaedia creation communities. Conclusions regarding the significance of the initial choice of rules, the processes available to alter these rules, and the potential for dissipation or disruption of efforts are reached, and a proposal to conceive of open source activities as having important parallels to the management of museums rather than bazaars is advanced.
Keywords: open source software, Wikipedia, Debian, epistemic communities, governance, practice, social sustainability, community growth
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
