Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Functioning of a Free Software Community

2007; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.23987/sts.55211

2243-4690

Didier Demazière, François Hørn, Marc Zune,

Wikis in Education and Collaboration

The ability to build solid and coherent software from spontaneous, sudden and evanescent involvement is viewed as an enigma by sociologists and economists. The internal heterogeneity of project contributors questions the functioning of collective action: how can commitments that are so dissimilar be put together? Our objective is to consider FLOSS communities as going concerns which necessitate a minimum of order and common, shared, social rules to function. Through an in-depth and diachronic analysis of the Spip project, we present two classical modes of social regulation: a control regulation centred on the product and an autonomous regulation reflecting the differentiated commitments. Our data shows that the meaning, value and legitimacy of contributors’ involvements are defined and rated more collectively, through exchanges, judgments, and evaluations. A third regulation mode, called distributed community regulation and aimed at creating and transforming shared rules that produces recognition and stratification, is then presented.