2 - Decoding the Free/Open Source Software Puzzle: A Survey of Theoretical and Empirical Contributions

Abstract

The chapter traces the contours of the main relevant aspects of the F/OSS institutional environment, beginning with a review of the available theoretical and empirical evidence bearing on the issue of the motivation of contributors to F/OSS projects. The Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) phenomenon attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years. While early contributions have focused mainly on the question whether the “puzzle” of open source could be reconciled with economic theory, subsequent contributions have uncovered a wider range of interesting issues. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The F/OSS is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon. Several theoretical and empirical studies have so far uncovered a number of aspects of this heterogeneity, showing not only that F/OSS projects differ significantly from one another in terms of the complexity of the software developed, its degree of modularity, the nature of coordination or the intensity of communication among the various contributors, to cite few relevant dimensions of the heterogeneity, but within the same project participants differ as regards the intensity of their contributions, the primary motivation for contributing, the level of ideological commitment.