Abstract
This paper presents some of the findings from a 5-year empirical study of FOSS (free/libre and open source software) commons, completed in 2011. FOSS projects are Internet-based common property regimes where the project source code is developed over the Internet. The resulting software is generally distributed with a license that provides users with the freedoms to access, use, read, modify and redistribute the software. In this study we used three different and very large datasets (approximately 107,000; 174,000 and 1400 cases respectively) with information on FOSS projects residing in Sourceforge.net, one of the largest, if not the largest, FOSS repository in the world. We employ various quantitative methods to uncover factors that lead some FOSS projects to ongoing collaborative success, while others become abandoned. After presenting some of our study’s results, we articulate the collaborative “story” of FOSS that emerged. We close the paper by discussing some key findings that can contribute to a general theory of Internet-based collective-action and FOSS-like forms of digital online commons.
Highlights
To emphasize the importance of digital information as a commons, let us start with a question for readers’ reflection: What allowed people to construct websites so rapidly and exponentially in the early years (1994–1999)?We agree with publisher Tim O’Reilly (2003) on the answer: the early web browsers like Mosaic, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer all provided a “View Source” menu item, allowing web surfers to read the HTML logic of the webpage they liked, copy it, and create new derivative works based on it
This paper presents some of the findings from a 5-year empirical study of FOSS commons, completed in 2011
FOSS projects are Internet-based common property regimes where the project source code is developed over the Internet
Summary
To emphasize the importance of digital information as a commons, let us start with a question for readers’ reflection: What allowed people to construct websites so rapidly and exponentially in the early years (1994–1999)?. In the area of computer software development this kind of co-production has existed since the beginning of the computing era (1950s, 1960s), when the free sharing of readable software code and collaboration on new versions were the norm It was only in the late 1960s and 1970s that software became viewed as a proprietary commodity by software development firms (Drahos and Braithwaite 2002; O’Reilly 2003). As a result of the open-source phenomenon, perhaps more than any other category of Internet user, computer programmers and FOSS programmers in particular have significant experience in online collaboration in the context of digital information commons. We conclude with some theoretical reflections that move toward a general theory of FOSS-like online collective-action
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