Looking towards open source
September 30, 2008
Open source communities are fundamentally different than traditional organizations, which I’ve researched. So I’ve got some questions.
Looking towards open source
I’m keeping most of my research question. I had said:
I want to develop software that can help to reveal knowledge about who holds various kinds of power in an organization, over whom they exert that power, and in what way. My hope is that revealing such knowledge will empower the organization and its members first to understand how power affects them in accomplishing their goals, second to help them avoid being exploited, and third to allow them to adjust the balances of power in order to better support both organizational and individual goals.
But the organizations I’m talking about there are traditional organizations: non-profits and for-profit companies. But because of ethical concerns, I want to change the kind of organization from that kind to open source software communities, who do all their business (communication, collaboration, decision making, conflict resolution) in public, and whose product is intended to be shared and freely disseminated. This is good — it handles all my ethical concerns.
But, open source communities are fundamentally different than traditional organizations. They have different goals, operating procedures, incentives, constraints, and so for. People people work on open source projects for different reasons
The exercise of power in an open source community is likely to be different, as well as the types of power held. The kinds of games played are likely to be different, as well. So if my goal is to develop software to “empower the individuals and the organization both to first become more savvy about how power affects them in accomplishing their goals,” this is likely to be a different kind of software than I would have written to support workers in a traditional organization. But in what way will it be different?
I have some questions to answer:
- How does the open source development model differ from other software development models? Methodologies? Does open source imply a particular methodology (iterative, waterfall, agile, etc.)? Probably not.
- How does the open source community model differ from commercial software company organizational models? Is there one community model, or are there many? I’m thinking games here — see Cockburn Agile Software Development, because he talks about this. See the Bee Keeper Model.
- How do open source projects form? How do they end? How does this differ from commercial projects?
- Who participates in open source projects? How are new members accepted into the community (analogs to the lurker -> newbie -> regular progression in online discussion communities (USENET, forums, etc.)?)
- How is membership controlled? How are roles assigned? How are tasks assigned?
- Most interesting are the larger open source projects, which have tens or hundreds of contributors: Linux kernel, the *BSDs, Python, Perl, Ruby, Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, Apache *, etc.
- How is cooperation done? Conflict resolution? How is power exerted, and what kind of power is in evidence (Crozier and Friedberg)? See: “Open Source Projects Manage Themselves? Dream On.“, and “The Cathedral and the Bazaar
- What kinds of projects is open source good at, and what kinds are it not good at? Why?
