A Participation Architecture to Support User Peripheral Participation in a Hybrid FOSS Community

Abstract

Participation by product users is critical to success in free, open-source software (FOSS) software communities as they originate and develop valuable ideas for product innovation that are unlikely to originate from the core software development community. Users tend to be involved at the periphery of FOSS communities, suggesting new product ideas, highlighting problems with user documentation, or explaining when the product design fails to fit with the needs of their local user application domain. As an increasing number of FOSS projects employ a hybrid participation model that combines volunteer effort with paid software development effort or product support, it can be difficult for non-developer users to participate in product innovation. In colocated organizations, it is theorized that peripheral participants learn how to engage with the practices and cultural identity of a community through a sociocultural apprenticeship known as legitimate peripheral participation. But we have little literature that explores how legitimate peripheral participation is enabled in online communities. The research study presented in this article explores how participation by peripheral users in a hybrid FOSS project is afforded by participation architecture channels and community mechanisms that mediate two forms of engagement: a “cognitive apprenticeship” that introduces participants to situated domain activity, such as the community processes involved in product innovation, and a “social apprenticeship” by which participants become enculturated in the system of meanings, values, norms, and behaviors that govern community/participant identity. We identified five stages of community innovation, analyzing sociotechnical affordances of the online participation architecture that enable peripheral participants to internalize the meanings of community practice and to develop a social identity within the FOSS community. Our contribution to theory is provided by the substantive explanation of the cognitive and social translations that enable legitimate peripheral participation in online communities, mediated by sociotechnical access channels and mechanisms that afford two contrasting forms of opportunities for action: those resulting from interactions between a goal-oriented actor and the technology platform features or channels of participation, and those associated with the social structures, roles, and relationships underpinning community interactions. Neither of these is sufficient without the other. Our contribution to practice is provided by an explanation of how four distinct categories of affordance provide these cognitive and social apprenticeship benefits, allowing participation architecture designers to cater to all forms of peripheral user participation. We conclude that the technical affordances of a typical FOSS community participation architecture are insufficient to mediate peripheral participation by nontechnical users. Meaningful participation is mediated by interactions between boundary spanners who play knowledge-brokering and organizational bridging roles. The combination of technical and social affordances enables peripheral participants to acquire an interior view of community practices and social culture and in turn to introduce new ideas, new values, and new rationales to produce a generative dance of innovation that percolates through the community.