Altruism or Self-benefit?
Motivations of the
Open Source Software Community
MASTER THESIS August 2009
By: Benjamin Neuteboom Student Number: 1345354
Supervisor:
Prof. dr. R.T.A.J. Leenders
Reviewer:
dr. W.G. Biemans
University of Groningen
Abstract
The success of Linux, Apache and Mozilla Firefox shows that the open source software paradigm is a very promising online innovation. Open source software (OSS) is created by a community of contributors who can not own nor sell the product. This raises the question of what motivates these contributors to invest their time and intellect in these projects. Scientific literature provides heterogeneous and contradicting claims on this subject. For that reason, this study takes out the two extremes on the motivational scale; altruism and self-benefit, and analyses these incentives. This analysis is then placed next to a meta-analysis on motivational studies in the OSS community. The ultimate goal of this article is to provide evidence on the leading incentive for contributions and present implications for people working in or with an OSS community.
Keywords: Open source software, Motivation, Altruism, Online community
Introduction
Over the last 15 years, many open source products have made successful entries in the software market. The development speed and quality of this innovation often outpaces commercial software development. Where people thought there was never enough time or especially money to create a decent counterpart to Microsoft Windows, Linux was created as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by internet (Raymond, 2001).
One of the most interesting subjects in the research on open source software (OSS) is the subject of why people contribute to the development of these projects. What puzzles most of the economists dealing with this topic is the fact that OSS is developed for free by highly educated volunteer programmers.. This raises the question of why these people dedicate their time and intellect to a public good. It is reasonable to assume that a certain programmer or group of programmers create a software product out of personal need, fun, or to fill a gap in the market. But this does not explain why they choose to share it with the rest of the world with a free license.
Research on the subject of motivations within the OSS community can lead to vital information. For example, knowing the motivations could lead to essential implications for both OSS developers and commercial software firms engaging in the performances of the OSS community. As when starting an OSS project, it is vital to know how to gather and maintain a community of enthusiastic contributors. For that reason, this study can provide benefits for managers interested in, or already creating value out of OSS products. Information on motivations can lead to new reward structures and systems. Also, knowledge on the motivations of OSS communities can lead to assumptions for other innovations depending on voluntary communities. Therefore, also scientists can have interests in this study as a starting point for research of motivations in online communities. In addition, the members of the OSS community should be aware of who benefits of their contributions and what these benefits are.
In the current scientific literature, many different incentives for contributions have been put forward. The early writers claim that the hacker culture plays an important role in the enthusiasm of the software programmers (Raymond, 2001) as a combination of political and social motives. Other studies show private benefits as incentives for dedicating time and effort to OSS projects, such as career opportunities and status within the communities (von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003; Roberts, Hann & Slaughter, 2006). Some writers claim that the availability of a large group of free beta testers and users provides incentive for contributing software codes (Weber, 2004; Scacchi, 2004).
The heterogeneity of the results of several studies on OSS creates a lack of a clear view on the actual incentives for the community to invest their time and programming skills to open source software. Therefore, the main research question is: “Are the motivations of the open source software community primarily based on altruism or self-benefit?”
The aim of this study is to provide an answer to the research question by analyzing the influence of altruism or self-benefit on the motivations of the users and developers of OSS. To be able to provide conclusions on this subject, the various incentives of contributors need to taken into account. These vary from intrinsic motivations such as “fun to program” to extrinsic motivations such as “salary”. The analysis should provide answers to questions such as: “In what way are altruism and reciprocity related?”, “How are altruism and self-benefit related to the performance of the contributors?”, and “what is the role of commercial software firms?”. In addition, the analysis is tested by comparing results of several OSS case-studies. The evaluation of different OSS cases could assist on presenting assumptions of the influence of the commercial nature of an OSS project on the incentives of contributors. In that context, attention is given to the results of OSS projects with open or commercial natures.
The outline of the article will be as following: First, an introduction of open source software will be given. This section will present a short description of the evolution of OSS and the basic characteristics of the OSS community and development process. The next section explores the costs and benefits of investing time and intellect to a product that no one can own.
Following, the definitions and examples of altruism and self-benefit are outlined. This provides a foundation for the theoretical analysis argumenting for both altruism and self-benefit as leading motivators.
The Open Source Software Definition
What exactly is open source software? Basically, open source software comes equipped with licenses that provide existing and future users the right to use, inspect, modify and distribute modified and unmodified software to others (Raymond, 2001). Technically, source code is a sequence of instructions to be executed by a computer to accomplish a program’s purpose. Programmers write computer software in the form of source code. To convert a program into a form that can actually operate a computer, source code is translated into machine code using a software tool called a compiler. The compiling process removes program documentation and creates a “binary” version of the program- a sequence of computer instructions consisting only of strings of ones and zeros (von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003).
Although it is now called revolutionary, the idea of OSS development is about as old as software development itself. In fact, when researchers in the 1960s began to use computers for their work, they often had to rely on open sharing of software code simply because commercial software solutions and support were not available at that time (Hertel et al, 2003). Binary code is very difficult for programmers to read and interpret. Therefore, programmers or firms that wish to prevent others from understanding and modifying their code will release only binary versions of the software. This gives the commercial firms an opportunity to make profits from selling the license to use the product. Ultimately, the difference between the providing of the source code or not is the difference between open source software and proprietary software.
The OSS definition is much broader than just granting unrestricted access to the source code of a software system (Fugetta, 2003). The definition of “open source” is based on the older, quite similar principle of “free software” originated by Richard Stallman. Frustrated by firms that concealed the source code of their software, he founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Along with this, he developed the following definition: “Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”. Free software is a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy distribute, study, change and improve the software.” Stallman believed that placing traditional property rights on software makes “pirates” out of neighbours who want to help each other (Weber, 2004).
and Scacchi, 2008). The structures and control of the general development process are based on the public licences created by “free” or open source initiatives. Also, a critical observation from the evolution of OSS is that “the believes, narratives, and memes play a role in facilitating the adoption, deployment, use and evolution of OSS (Scacchi, 2004)”.
Regarding the development process, the driving force of open source innovation is online communication, i.e. the Internet. The use of a network makes it possible to perform teamwork even with geographical and temporal separation. Basically, making a software product, is writing very long lines of code. As the software grows, the lines of code expand. The most time consuming part of software development is testing the code and fixing the small ‘errors’ that rise: the ‘bugs’. This is where the strength of open source software comes out. The community of contributors is able to access the source code and fix or report flaws in the software product. Anyone with interest in contributing to an OSS project can join the developer mailing list. It contains many different sorts of messages, including technical discussions, proposed changes, and automatic messages about changes in the code and problem reports. Also, there usually is a database that stores the changes that are made, the date and time of the change, developer login, files touched, numbers of lines added and deleted for each file, and a short abstract describing the change (Weber, 2004).
This combination of decentralisation and asynchronous communication creates a transparent and very accessible development process, capable of producing high-quality software products in short period.
Costs and Benefits of Contributing
It is obvious that the community of contributors is the most prominent resource of open source software. The contributors of OSS use their own resources to privately invest in creating new software code. In principle, these innovators could then claim proprietary rights over their code, but instead they choose to freely reveal it as a public good. One of the appearing questions now is; as Lerner and Tirole (2000) put it: “Why should thousands of top-notch programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good?”
In order to answer such a question, it is sensible to first explore the costs and benefits of contributing to open source software. It is assumed by the Social Exchange Theory that people first outweigh the costs and benefits of their actions before they make decisions such as revealing their innovations.
software can never deplete, so the use by one individual or firm does not diminish the availability to another individual. A good that is non-exclusive is available to one as it is available to all. Open source software meets the definition of a non-exclusive good, as it is publicly and freely available. It can be downloaded from the Internet and used freely even by those who did not contribute to its development (O’Mahony, 2003). Although the software can also be purchased from firms selling products and services that use OSS and contribute value by packaging it and/or providing service and support.
The only material investment that contributors have to make is access to the Internet, which is nowadays insignificant. The more considerable personal costs are the investment of time and intellect. To be able to aid software development, a person needs to have certain programming skills. However, research shows that a great majority of volunteer contributors is employed in the IT sector or deal with similar tasks at universities (Ghosh et al, 2002). This suggests that the intellectual investment is not a large barrier for contributors. Lerner and Tirole (2002) argue that OSS contributors incur an opportunity cost of his or her time. While the programmer is working on an OSS project, he is unable to engage in another programming activity. A programmer who would work as an independent on open source projects would miss the monetary compensation he would receive if he were working for a commercial firm. Also, for a programmer employed at a commercial company, the opportunity cost is the cost of not focusing on his primary assignments. However, these opportunity costs are opposed by results from an OSS study by Lakhani and Wolf (2005) that show that 55 percent of the respondents contributed code during their work time, but a very large fraction did this with approval of their work supervisor.
In summary, the main costs of contributing and sharing are low because of the non-excludability and non-rivalness of open source software, other costs are:
-Time -Intellect
-Opportunity costs
-Computer and network access
The benefit of sharing the code is that the large group of new users acts as a group of free beta testers, providing bug reports and feedback (Scacchi, 2004). Therefore, OSS is subject to positive network externalities. This means that the value of a software product to any user increases as more people use the software on their computers. For example, it is more valuable for a person to have a fax machine if many of other people also have fax machines. The access and use of a community of users and beta testers does also add to the intrinsic rewards of personal learning and gaining experience in programming (Lakhani & Wolf, 2005).
An indirect benefit is improved career opportunities. Persons that have proven fundamental support to a successful OSS project, have bigger chances of future job offers or shares in commercial open source-based companies. Another benefit recognized by Roberts et al. (2006) is improved status that can be achieved within the community. The OSS community is described as a “meritocracy”, meaning that the more work you have done, the more work you are allowed to do (Fielding, 1999). The benefit is that in the particularly transparent development process of open software, the contributors are openly credited for their work. The “fun of programming” (Raymond, 1999; Lakhani & von Hippel, 2003) is more a motive for creating software, but does not directly imply a benefit of sharing code with a community. As mentioned earlier, in the recent years, more and more commercial IT firms have large interests in the performance of the OSS community. For example, firms such as Red Hat create value by selling packages of Linux and providing services. To gain more control over the development of OSS software, commercial firms have OSS contributors on their payroll. The consequence is that for several people, adding lines of code and fixing bugs for OSS projects is part of their normal job, with simply salary as main benefit.
In summary, the main benefits of contributing and sharing are: -Salary
-Learning / Experience -Network externalities -Career opportunities / Status
Examples of Altruism
Altruism is a variant of intrinsic motivation in which one seeks to increase the welfare of others. It is the personal disposition at the opposite pole from selfishness - “doing something for another at some cost to oneself” (Hars & Ou, 2002 quote Ozinga, 1999). Since open-source programmers provide something for others (writing programs with open open-source code) at their own expense (time, energy, opportunity costs, etc.), they belong to this category. As with other intrinsic behaviours, altruism can be presumed to be an important force that motivates OSS programmers to participate in OSS projects. Altruism is widely held to be associated with positive norms and, following the theory of reasoned action, should have a positive influence on the level of participation in open source projects.
A variation on altruism is community identification. Programmers may identify themselves as members of the OSS community and align their goals with those of the community. As mentioned earlier, open source software is about more than sharing code, and represents certain shared beliefs and ideology. Elliot and Scacchi (2008) illustrate how the open source movement has evolved into a subculture. They conclude that the ideological foundation of the free software movement mobilizes people to join the movement and contribute to OSS development. This suggests that an important incentive for contributors is a form of altruism. Related to community identification is the belief that programmers are “helping the cause” and contribute because they think that “software should not be a proprietary good”.
helped by strangers: the person helping is expected that when they are stranded, someone will help them in return (Lakhani & von Hippel, 2003).
Examples of Self-benefit
Opposed to altruistic incentives to share innovation, there are several reasons based on self-interested arguments. In the previous cost-benefit analysis, a number of the benefits of contributing to OSS represent private benefits rather than collective benefits.
One of the most obvious self-directed motivations is simply being paid for contributing to open source software. Although OSS communities do not have a profit motive per se and therefore do not offer monetary compensation to contributors, the growing commercial interest in many OSS products has generated a thriving OSS industry. It is not unusual for third parties to employ programmers for the specific purpose to contribute to OSS projects. Examples include Time Warner’s engagement in Mozilla and IBM’s involvement in both the Linux and Apache OSS projects (Roberts et al., 2006).
Importantly, several studies (Lakhani & Wolf, 2005; Roberts et al., 2006; Hertel et al, 2003) show that the contributors motivated by monetary rewards such as salary are responsible for a very high level of contributions. This proves that salaried contributors represent an important factor for the development of OS software.
Another motivation considered as self-centred is status or reputation within the community. One of the findings of Hertel et al (2003) was that the OSS development resembles the structures and processes of the scientific community. “Both the scientific and the OSS community are not driven by monetary rewards but by competitive motives of status and reputation”. In other words, where in the scientific community researchers attempt to achieve higher status by publishing many articles, OSS contributors gain status by appearing on the credit list of a successful OSS product.
Related to the status or reputation incentive is the career concern incentive. As mentioned earlier, a great majority of the community have IT-related jobs or follow IT-related studies. By contributing to OSS initiatives contributors signal their status, identity, and abilities. Furthermore, companies seeking programmers with particular skills can find potential hires by examining OSS code. Thus, gaining reputation is very instrumental in helping them to advance their careers in the software industry (Oreg & Nov, 2008).
skills. In a very large study under OSS participants by Ghosh et al. (2002), most respondents claimed that they contributed to improve individual skills. “Almost eight out of ten software developers started with OSS because they wanted to learn and develop new skills, and half the sample claimed that they wanted to share their knowledge and skills with other software developers”. This proves that learning new skills and gaining experience is a motivation mainly based on personal benefits.
Altruism or Self-benefit?
As the preceding explorations demonstrate, the altruistic motivations come from a social ground, and the self-beneficial motivations come from an economic ground. The OSS community is considered as a social movement, but it is unlikely and utopian to think that every contributor acts out of altruism. But would all of the OSS projects ever succeed if the incentives for the contributors were all based on self-benefit?
Before these motivations are evaluated by study results, a trade-off is presented by proposing arguments before and against altruism or self-benefit as dominant incentive for contributing to OSS. This section outlines theories from OSS literature on altruism and self-benefit in OSS communities. After this, a meta-research will be presented, testing the theories against empirical studies on motivations within the OSS community.
Altruism as leading motivator
Pleading for altruism are the socio-political features of the OSS community. The open source movement has its origins in altruistic beliefs. Many people identify with the ideology of OSS and share the same value that their work should be open.
It is difficult to understand why contributors help to develop these OSS products in an altruistic manner, when they could also benefit from the knowledge and the products developed in the network without spending their time and effort on the community, that is, free-riding (Casaló et al., 2009). According to von Hippel and von Krogh (2003), free riding is not a great concern within the community. Instead, they are also considered as an asset. Free riders that adopt OSS code without contributing to in nonetheless increase the “market share” and importance of the project and may help set de facto standards. Also, the intrinsic rewards from participating to a public good outweigh the potential rewards incurred from free-riding on the public goods other produce.
Shah (2006) also proposes a selfless motive for sharing this innovation. “Enjoyment derived through the act of programming does not necessitate that one work within a community—one could work alone. Working within a community helps the hobbyists identify tasks that they find challenging and interesting, and that are useful for others. Contribution is necessary to obtain feedback affirming that one’s activities are useful to others.”
Self-benefit as leading motivator
In online innovations, it is very credible that intrinsically motivated contributors share code not out of altruism but out desire for a higher status or reputation. In an article by Markus et
al. (2000), participating in OSS projects is described as a highly visible activity. Gaining a
reputation for one’s work is an important reward for participating in OSS projects: “We do keep score in the open-source world… Our scoreboard is the ‘credit list’ or the ‘history file’ that’s attached to every OSS project… If you see somebody’s name on several credit lists, then you know that the person is doing lots of good work (from: Raymond, 2001).” Gaining or enhancing reputation or status through participation in OSS projects can lead to such rewards as employment opportunities or access to venture capital (Lerner & Tirole, 2000). In a motivation study by Roberts et al. (2006), status and opportunity motives have the most significant relationship with participation in an OSS project. The reputation economics are also assumed present in other online innovations such as positive or negative feedback on discussion sites, auction sites and reputation of contributors to file-sharing sites using Torrents etc.
The most obvious arguments for self-benefit as motive for contribution are monetary rewards. As mentioned earlier, more and more companies create value using OS software. Actually, anybody can use OSS to make a profit by using it for commercial activities or by providing services. Also, there are no legal complications in using OSS licenses in a business or commercial context (Christl, 2008). This also includes software that has been protected by GPL licenses. The only limitation is that it is not allowed to bundle and resell modified versions without opening the corresponding modified sources. Among other companies, IBM has recognized the development of OSS and over the past few years has developed a hybrid business model. For example, IBM offers services for many OSS components and installs a growing share of hardware with Linux, Apache, Firefox and OpenOffice (all OSS products). Recently even Microsoft, considered as the most prominent opponent of OSS, announced to release source code in order to make Linux work on a Microsoft infrastructure (NRC Newspaper, July 2009). The growing popularity of business models where firms use OSS to sell products or services, has influenced the motivations within the community. To illustrate, several OSS surveys report that many contributors receive direct or indirect monetary rewards such as salary for their work on OSS projects (Hertel et al., 2003: 43%; Ghosh et al., 2002: 53.7%).
incentive for many individuals and firms to contribute to the development and maintenance of open source software.
Analysis of Theories
Social networks such as OSS networks are supposed to be subject to the Social Exchange Theory, stating that relationships are formed by the use of a cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives. However, this theory reduces human interaction to a purely rational process that arises from economic theory. For example, according to this theory, persons that perceive that the costs are higher than benefits will choose to leave the relationship. Also, persons that give much to others try to get much from them, and persons that get much from others are under pressure to give much to them. The current analysis of literature suggests that this theory is limited in the case of open source software. Factors such as the social-political character and evidence of salary rewards show that the OSS community can not be generalized under the Social Exchange Theory.
Looking back on the theoretical arguments pleading for altruism or private benefits as principal motivations for sharing this innovation, the results favour predominantly self-benefit. Although the OSS community is considered as a “gift culture” (Raymond, 2001), previous arguments suggest that self-beneficial motives mostly sustain these “gifts”.
First, as firms have become increasingly important participants in OSS projects, a new mix of incentives includes private rewards obtained from contributions to OSS projects and related on the contributors’ career paths. Also, it is argued that reciprocity is not based on altruistic values, but more on the expected returns of sharing. Besides from simply personal need for better software, is the current “reputation economy” an important factor in the incentives of contributors to OSS.
Meta-analysis Research Method
reason that this framework suits this study best is because its simplicity proves to be useful for comparison of various empirical studies. Also, the division between economic and social motives clearly represents the division between self-beneficial and altruistic motives.
For this study, the relevant areas are Economic; considering self-beneficial motives and Social; considering altruistic motives. Technological motives show mainly self-beneficial examples related to the software product such as: learning, network externalities and “scratching a personal itch”. For simplicity and clarity reasons, these are placed under the area of Self-benefit/Economic motives in the assessment and analysis.
Following the assessment, the results will be evaluated and placed under the light of the context and characteristics of the studied projects.
The OSS projects subject to the assessment and evaluation are represented in the table below:
Study Sample
Ghosh, Glott, Krieger and Robles (2002) 2784 OSS participants
Hars and Ou (2002) 81 OSS participants
41 projects
Lakhani and von Hippel (2003) 1709 Apache Usenet participants
Hertel, Niedner and Herrmann (2003) 141 Linux participants
Roberts, Hann and Slaughter (2006) 288 Apache participants
Shah (2006) 88 Interviews,
± 50% OSS participants, Mailing lists
Oreg and Nov (2008) 185 OSS participants
28 projects
Table 1. Analysed Studies
Findings
The assessment of study results shows that the motivations of OSS contributors is a complex subject, with no evident consensus as to which motivation is most dominant (See Table 2 on
following page).
Study Motivation Area Motivations Outcome
Economic 1. Learning/improving new skills (78,9-70,5%),
4. "Make money" motive (4,4-12,3%) Ghosh, Glott, Krieger
and Robles (2002)
Social 2. Share knowledge and skills (49,8-67,2%)
3. Ideological motives (30,1-37,9%)
Private benefits score highest, however; altruism is also a prominent factor Economic 1. Human capital (88,3%) 2. Self-determination (79,7%) 3. Peer recognition (43%) Hars and Ou (2002)
Social 4. Community identification (27,8%)
5. Altruism (16,5%)
Altruism scores low, private benefits score high. Self-determination is an ambiguous factor in this setting
Economic
3. Gaining reputation/career prospects (24-6%) 4. Enjoyment (20-28%)
5. Part of job (5%) Lakhani and von
Hippel (2003)
Social 1. Expected reciprocity (15-45-48%)
2. "Helping the cause" (33%)
Collective benefits score highest, however; 45-48% have been helped before, and therefore reciprocate
Economic 2. Improve product/Career advantage (8,5%)
4. Enjoyment (5,8%) Hertel, Niedner and
Herrmann (2003)
Social 1. Identification as Linux user/ developer (22,9%)
3. Norm-oriented motives (6,5%)
Identification as member of the Linux community was the statement most participants agreed with
Economic
1. Status and Opportunity motives (0,256) 2. Extrinsic motives (0,152)
3. Use-value motives (0,062) Roberts, Hann and
Slaughter (2006)
Social 4. Intrinsic motives (-0,025)
Status and opportunity motives clearly show the strongest relation with participation in this study
Economic (need driven)
Reciprocity, norms: n=high
Future product improvements: n=moderate Career concerns: n=very low
Shah (2006)
Social Reciprocity, norms: n=high
Fun, enjoyment: n = Low
Most of the participation was need-driven. Reciprocity and desire to conform to the norms of the community was both an Economic as Social motive. Career concerns score low
Economic 1. Self development (4.69)
3. Reputation building (3.73) Oreg and Nov (2008)
Social 2. Altruism (4.36)
Self development scores highest on the 6-point scale, however; altruism also relates to contributions.
In short, the most prominent motives are beneficial: Learning/improving new skills, self-development and status & opportunity motives. Less prominent, high scoring altruistic incentives are: community identification and the need to share knowledge and skills. This suggests that the “pith of the matter” is not at one of the ends of the motivational axis, but stuck somewhere between self-benefit and the centre.
Besides from revealing motivations in influential order, these empirical studies have also exposed other findings that complement the theoretical analysis.
Fist of all, several studies (Hars & Ou; Hertel et al.; Ghosh et al.; Roberts et al.) prove that a large number of contributors are paid for their work on OSS projects. Assuming that the influence of commercial firms will be growing in the future, monetary rewards are a very significant factor in motivations for contributing and sharing this innovation.
Also, developing and maintaining new skills and experience in software is often mentioned as motivation for contributing to the OSS community. These people share because of the elaborate feedback system that open source software offers. Besides, this motivation combined with status or reputation seeking provides a basis for another important incentive: career opportunities.
The results from Hars and Ou (2002) show that students and hobby programmers seem to be more strongly motivated by altruism and community identification. And the salaried programmers are more concerned with self-marketing. This also accounts for other studies (Shah). An additional finding from Roberts et al. is that developers with higher status motivations appear to be the more substantive contributors.
Concerning altruism, Ghosh et al. (2002) asked the respondents about their balance of “give and take” within the OSS community. Regarding themselves, the developers are apparently convinced that they get more out of the community than they give in. Also, the share of those who state that they give more than they take is only 9%. This suggests that although sharing knowledge & skills scores high as a motive, the altruistic values are not dominantly present within the community.
and backwards compatibility of the code. This interaction appears to be critical in allowing the open source project to function without a formal task identification and assignment system.
Oreg and Nov (2008) underline the potential bias of social desirable answering by the participants of motivational studies. Given contributors’ requirement to establish and make their expertise public, they expected reputation-gaining to be among the stronger, rather than weaker motivations for this context. One possible explanation for its low rating compared to altruism, may be the effect of social desirability on participants’ responses to the surveys. “Whereas altruistic motivations are highly valued in society, a tendency to flaunt one’s abilities is not. Respondents may have thus been prone to a bias in their responses to these questions.” This might be one of the explanations why status motivations score relatively low in studies, while the theoretical analysis suggests that reputation and status play a large role in motivating contributors of OSS.
Project Characteristics
Because of the fact that most OSS studies are based upon online surveys and observations of mailing lists of many different diverse OSS projects, it is difficult to create solid conclusions on the influence of project context and characteristics. Also, there are insufficient studies on OSS communities in commercial business models. Nevertheless, the assessment of studies offers some interesting findings.
The results show that many of the contributors that are actually paid for their contributions work on major projects such as Linux and Apache. This claims that for the smaller, more creative projects, the self-interest motive based on salary rewards should be much less dominant.
Social networking and identity building is an important factor in OSS communities. It is very likely that the more informal projects with high levels of communication attract and maintain contributors that show more social motivational profiles.
Conclusions
As the preceding analyses demonstrate, motivations for participation in open source projects proved to be a complex phenomenon. This study draws a line between altruism and self-interest by analyzing literature and empirical studies. However, in practice it is difficult to place factors such as reciprocity strictly under altruism or self-benefit. And the heterogeneity of study results proves that the incentive to contribute and share code is often a combination of different factors.
The results show that self-benefit is the leading motivator in the OSS community. This is largely caused by the influence of commercial firms, creating a commercial business model where contributors receive monetary rewards. Elements of self-development such as learning new skills and gaining programming experience have proven to be important incentives for contributors. These can be assumed to be positively related to factors such as career perspectives and underline the commercial focus of the OSS community.
It should be underlined that self-beneficial motives such as salary rewards are a salient force mostly in large commercial OSS projects. This implies that in smaller, informal and creative communities, these motives score lower and make place for other incentives.
Although reputation and status building are hypothesized as influential factors, the meta-analysis shows low scores for these factors. However, social desirability of respondents can be an explanation for this.
Even though altruism is a human value that positively motivates contributors to share knowledge and help other users, studies show that respondents tend to receive more than give, and need other incentives such as being helped before and developing personal skills in order to take the first step.
“Managerial” Implications
Understanding the differences in motivations across contexts and their relationships to contributors can help OSS projects that rely on volunteers to more effectively utilize the open source model. Considering that self-beneficial incentives are a larger motivational force than altruistic ideology implies several implications for OSS in practice.
The OSS community should welcome commercial efforts by companies. First of all, the salaried contributors do not seem to crowd out the motivations of volunteers, instead they can benefit from each other. Moreover, much programming work on the OSS projects is not very interesting for the voluntary contributors, who seek creative and scientific challenges. This so-called “non sexy” work, such as the development of graphical interfaces or technical manuals, is often performed by programmers who are paid by commercial firms. In practice, software companies should make use the salaried, highly productive contributors as gatekeepers to the rest of the community. This implies that salaried contributors should pass on knowledge and information, and act as representatives of the community.
This study shows that volunteers of OSS projects need certain other benefits to be attracted to these projects. The benefits of learning, gaining experience and network externalities should be promoted when organizing an OSS project. Initiators can attract contributors by supplying a foundation for learning and development, with extensive feedback systems and wide-ranging online communication.
To attract and maintain volunteers, the OSS community, whether or not fuelled by corporate interests, should provide a platform for status and reputation opportunities. As these volunteers appear to be the more substantial contributors, OSS should nurture such motivations. This can be done by devoting distinct website space to recognize distinguished contributors or by promoting involvement in OSS communities as leverage in the labour market.
Limitations and further research
The fact that this study focuses purely on altruistic and self-beneficial motives, provides a clear but rather limited view on motivations within the OSS community. There are many nuances within the motivational landscape of open source software, which have not been considered in this article.
Another limitation of this study is that in this article some social motives such as community identification are considered as altruistic, for the sake of contrast with economic motives. However, pure altruism is the deliberate pursuit of the interests of others or the public interest, which slightly differs from sharing with the community or reciprocity.
In addition, because the data comes from a meta-analysis of different OSS studies with different characteristics, there is no opportunity for solid conclusions; nevertheless, this provides a basis for further research.
Regarding further research, as the world of online innovations is changing at a fast pace, it would be advisable to perform a new community study in the future. This might provide evidence of a change in incentives in the OSS community, caused by corporate interests. A more elaborate study on the composition of OSS communities and their motivations could lead to sound conclusions. Also, it would be useful to assess the current distribution of volunteers and paid contributors.
It can also be very interesting to assess the feasibility of the open source model on physical products. For example, you see many groups of students or hobbyists working together trying to create energy efficient vehicles. What are their motivations? How do they license their product? And how do commercial firms interact with these groups?
References
Belenzon, S. & Schankerman, M. 2008. Motivation and Sorting in Open Source Software Innovation - CEPR Discussion Paper - No. 7012, October
Bonaccorsi, A. & Rossi, C. 2002. Why open source software can succeed - Working paper no
15 – Laboratory of Economics and Management Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies Pisa,
Italy
Bonaccorsi, A. & Rossi, C. 2003. Comparing motivations of individual programmers and firms to take part in the Open Source movement. From community to business – Working
Paper - Laboratory of Economics and Management Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
Pisa, Italy
Bonaccorsi, A. & Rossi, C. 2004. Altruistic individuals, selfish firms? The structure of motivation in Open Source software – First Monday – Vol. 9, No. 1
Casaló, L.V., Cisneros, J., Flavián, C. & Guinalıú, M. 2009. Determinants of Success in open source software networks - Industrial Management & Data Systems - Vol. 109 No. 4
Christl, A. 2008. Free Software and Open Source Business Models – In: G.B. Hall, M.G.
Leahy (eds.), Open Source Approaches in Spatial Data Handling. Advances in Geographic Information Science 2 - Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Dahlander, L. & Magnusson, M.G. 2008. How do Firms Make Use of Open Source Communities? – Long Range Planning – Vol. 41, 629-649
Elliot, M.S. & Scacchi, W. 2008. Mobilization of software developers: the free software movement – Information Technology & People – Vol. 21, No.1, 4-33
Feller, J., & Fitzgerald, B. 2000. A Framework Analysis of the Open Source Software Development Paradigm - Proceedings of the 21st International Conference in Information
Systems (ICIS 2000) 58-69.
Fuggetta, A. 2003. Open source software – an evaluation – The Journal of Systems and
Software – Vol. 66, 77-90
Ghosh, R.A., Glott, R., Krieger, B. & Robles, G. 2002. Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study - FLOSS, Final Study, Part 4: Survey of Developers – International Institute of Infonomics, University of Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Hars, A. & Ou, S. 2002. Working for Free? Motivations for Participating in Open-Source Projects – International Jouranl of Electronic Commerce – Spring, Vol. 6, No. 3, 25-39
Hertel, G., Niedner, S. & Herrmann, S. 2003. Motivation of software developers in Open Source projects: an Internet-based survey of contributors to the Linux kernel - Research
von Hippel, E. & von Krogh, G. 2003. Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science - Organization Science – Vol. 14, No. 2, March-April, 209-223
Kim, E.E. 2003. An Introduction Open Source Communities – Blue Oxen Associates – BOA0007， April
von Krogh, G., Spaeth, S. & Lakhani, K.R. 2003 .Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: a case study - Research Policy - Vol. 32, 1217–1241
von Krogh, G., Haefliger, S. & Spaeth, S. 2003. Collective action and Communal Resources in Open Source Software Development: The case of Freenet – Working Paper – Institute of Management, University of St. Gallen, Switserland, May
Lakhani, K.R. & von Hippel, E. 2003. How open source software works: “free” user-to-user assistance - Research Policy - Vol. 32, 923-943
Lakhani, K.R. & Wolf, R.G. 2005. Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects – in: Perspectives on Free and
Open Source Software – 1-21
Lerner, J. & Tirole, J. 2002. Some Simple Economics of Open Source – The Journal of
Industrial Economics – Vol. L, No. 2, June
Maurer, S.M., Scotchmer, S. 2006. Open Source Software: The New Intellectual Property Paradigm - NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES – No. 12148, March
Mockus A., Fielding, R.T. & Herbsleb, J.D. 2002. Two Case Studies of Open Source Software Development: Apache and Mozilla - ACM Transactions on Software Engineering
and Methodology - Vol. 11, No. 3, 309–346.
O’Mahony, S. 2003. Guarding the commons: how community managed software projects protect their work – Research Policy – Vol. 32, 1179-1198
Oreg, S. & Nov, O. 2007. Exploring motivations for contributing to open source initiatives: The roles of contribution context and personal values – Computers in Human Behaviour – Vol. 24, 2055-2073
Roberts, J.A., Han, I., & Slaughter, S.A. 2006. Understanding the Motivations, Participation, and Performance of Open Source Software Developers: A Longitudinal Study of the Apache Projects – Management Science - Vol. 52, No. 7, July 2006, 984–999
Scacchi, W. 2004. Understanding Open Source Software Evolution – Appeared in: Software
Evolution and Feedback – Wiley & Sons Inc, 2006
Scacchi, W., Feller, J., Fitzgerald, B., Hissam, S. & Lakhani, K.R. 2006. Understanding Free/Open Source Software Development Processes – Software Process Improvement
Shah, S.K. 2006. Motivation, Governance, and the Viability of Hybrid Forms in Open Source Software Development - Management Science - Vol. 52, No. 7, July 2006, 1000–1014
Books
Feller, J., Fitzgerald, B., Hissam, S.A. and Lakhani, K.R. 2005. Perspectives on Free and
Open Source Software – The MIT Press
Raymond, Eric S. 2001. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, Musings on Linux and Open Source by
an Accidental Revolutionary – O’Reilly Media Inc.
Weber, Steven. 2004. The Success of Open Source – Harvard University Press
Newspaper
