IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cri/cespri/wp190.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dragging developers towards the core

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Rullani

    (LEM - Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy and IVS – Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark.)

Abstract

The paper presents a dynamic perspective on the landscape of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) developers’ motivations and tries to isolate mechanisms sustaining developers’ contribution over time. The first part of the paper uses data gathered by the empirical studies relative to the FLOSS case to judge the relative importance of each group of incentives detected by the literature. In the second part of the paper, the same data are used to further characterize developers’ motivations in dynamics terms, showing how the relative importance of different incentives changes over time. Drawing inspiration from these results, the third part of the paper identifies a specific mechanism fostering developers’ contribution to the community activities, namely that: “Independently of developers’ exogenous preferences, the more their exposure to the FLOSS community social environment, the more their contribution to the community activities”. The key point of this hypothesis is that, if the exposure to the FLOSS community social environment is able to foster developers’ contribution beyond the level granted by their predetermined preferences, this leads directly to the evidence that the FLOSS community is provided with a mechanism sustaining and enhancing developers’ incentives to produce and diffuse code. In the last part of the paper, data relative to 14,497 developers working on SourceForge.net during two years (2001-2002) are employed to estimate a model testing the aforementioned hypothesis. Endogeneity problems are explicitly accounted for, and robustness checks are performed in order to make sure that the observed confirmation of the hypothesis is actually an empirically grounded result.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Rullani, 2006. "Dragging developers towards the core," KITeS Working Papers 190, KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy, revised Feb 2007.
  • Handle: RePEc:cri:cespri:wp190
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://ftp.unibocconi.it/pub/RePEc/cri/papers/WP190Rullani.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Josh Lerner, 2005. "The Scope of Open Source Licensing," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 20-56, April.
    2. Franke, Nikolaus & Hippel, Eric von, 2003. "Satisfying heterogeneous user needs via innovation toolkits: the case of Apache security software," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1199-1215, July.
    3. Alan Kirman & Miriam Teschl, 2006. "Searching for identity in the capability space," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 299-325.
    4. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Some Simple Economics of Open Source," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 197-234, June.
    5. Paul A. David & Dominique Foray, "undated". "Economic Fundamentals of the Knowledge Society," Working Papers 02003, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
    6. Sydney Winter & Giovanni Dosi, 2000. "Interpreting Economic Change: Evolution, Structures and Games," LEM Papers Series 2000/08, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    7. Weber, Steven, 2000. "The Political Economy of Open Source Software," UCAIS Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, Working Paper Series qt3hq916dc, UCAIS Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, UC Berkeley.
    8. Paola Giuri & Gaia Rocchetti & Salvatore Torrisi, 2002. "Open Source Software: From Open Science to New Marketing Models," LEM Papers Series 2002/23, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    9. Giuri, Paola & Ploner, Matteo & Rullani, Francesco & Torrisi, Salvatore, 2010. "Skills, division of labor and performance in collective inventions: Evidence from open source software," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 54-68, January.
    10. Stefano Comino & Fabio M. Manenti & Maria Laura Parisi, 2005. "From Planning to Mature: on the Determinants of Open Source Take Off," Department of Economics Working Papers 0517, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    11. Alessandro Nuvolari, 2004. "Collective invention during the British Industrial Revolution: the case of the Cornish pumping engine," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(3), pages 347-363, May.
    12. Richard P. Bagozzi & Utpal M. Dholakia, 2006. "Open Source Software User Communities: A Study of Participation in Linux User Groups," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1099-1115, July.
    13. Sonali K. Shah, 2006. "Motivation, Governance, and the Viability of Hybrid Forms in Open Source Software Development," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1000-1014, July.
    14. Partha Dasgupta & Paul A. David, 1987. "Information Disclosure and the Economics of Science and Technology," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: George R. Feiwel (ed.), Arrow and the Ascent of Modern Economic Theory, chapter 16, pages 519-542, Palgrave Macmillan.
    15. Lindgren, Monica & Wåhlin, Nils, 2001. "Identity construction among boundary-crossing individuals," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 357-377, September.
    16. Jean-Michel Dalle & Paul David, 2005. "The Allocation of Software Development Resources In ‘Open Source’ Production Mode," Industrial Organization 0502011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Juan Mateos Garcia & W. Edward Steinmueller, 2003. "The Open Source Way of Working: a New Paradigm for the Division of Labour in Software Development?," SPRU Working Paper Series 92, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David, Paul A. & Shapiro, Joseph S., 2008. "Community-based production of open-source software: What do we know about the developers who participate?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 364-398, December.
    2. Paul A. David & Francesco Rullani, 2008. "Dynamics of innovation in an “open source” collaboration environment: lurking, laboring, and launching FLOSS projects on SourceForge," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 647-710, August.
    3. Paolo CROSETTO, 2009. "Turning private vices into collective virtues: a simple model and an experiment on the SourceForge development community," Departmental Working Papers 2009-14, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    4. Christina Raasch, 2011. "Product Development In Open Design Communities: A Process Perspective," International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(04), pages 557-575.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francesco Rullani, 2006. "Dragging developers towards the core. How the Free/Libre/Open Source Software community enhances developers' contribution," LEM Papers Series 2006/22, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    2. Paul A. David & Francesco Rullani, 2008. "Dynamics of innovation in an “open source” collaboration environment: lurking, laboring, and launching FLOSS projects on SourceForge," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 647-710, August.
    3. F. Rullani & L. Zirulia, 2011. "A supply side story for a threshold model: Endogenous growth of the free and open source community," Working Papers wp781, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    4. Rullani, Francesco & Haefliger, Stefan, 2013. "The periphery on stage: The intra-organizational dynamics in online communities of creation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 941-953.
    5. Rullani, Francesco, 2005. "The three dimensions of a communitarian institution. The Open Source Software Community Case," AICCON Working Papers 16-2005, Associazione Italiana per la Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non Profit.
    6. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    7. Nicolai j. Foss & Lars Frederiksen & Francesco Rullani, 2016. "Problem‐formulation and problem‐solving in self‐organized communities: How modes of communication shape project behaviors in the free open‐source software community," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(13), pages 2589-2610, December.
    8. Paul A. David & Francesco Rullani, 2006. "Micro-dynamics of Free and Open Source Software Development. Lurking, laboring and launching new projects on SourceForge," LEM Papers Series 2006/26, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    9. Dongryul Lee & Byung Kim, 2013. "Motivations for Open Source Project Participation and Decisions of Software Developers," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 41(1), pages 31-57, January.
    10. Sheen S. Levine & Michael J. Prietula, 2014. "Open Collaboration for Innovation: Principles and Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(5), pages 1414-1433, October.
    11. Henkel, Joachim, 2006. "Selective revealing in open innovation processes: The case of embedded Linux," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 953-969, September.
    12. Schrape, Jan-Felix, 2017. "Open source projects as incubators of innovation: From niche phenomenon to integral part of the software industry," Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers 2017-03, University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies.
    13. Maha Shaikh & Emmanuelle Vaast, 2016. "Folding and Unfolding: Balancing Openness and Transparency in Open Source Communities," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 813-833, December.
    14. Chen Zhang & Jungpil Hahn & Prabuddha De, 2013. "Research Note ---Continued Participation in Online Innovation Communities: Does Community Response Matter Equally for Everyone?," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 1112-1130, December.
    15. Gächter, Simon & von Krogh, Georg & Haefliger, Stefan, 2010. "Initiating private-collective innovation: The fragility of knowledge sharing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 893-906, September.
    16. Stephen M. Maurer & Suzanne Scotchmer, 2006. "Open Source Software: The New Intellectual Property Paradigm," NBER Working Papers 12148, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Francesco Rullani, 2005. "The Debate and the Community. “Reflexive Identity” in the FLOSS Community," LEM Papers Series 2005/18, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    18. Jean-Michel Dalle & Paul A. David, 2007. "“It Takes All Kinds”: A Simulation Modeling Perspective on Motivation and Coordination in Libre Software Development Projects," Discussion Papers 07-024, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    19. de Jong, Jeroen P.J. & von Hippel, Eric, 2009. "Transfers of user process innovations to process equipment producers: A study of Dutch high-tech firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 1181-1191, September.
    20. Dahlander, Linus & Magnusson, Mats G., 2005. "Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 481-493, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Free/Libre/Open Source Software; incentives to innovate; dynamics of motivations; cooperation; community.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cri:cespri:wp190. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valerio Sterzi (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.kites.unibocconi.it/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.