Crowding Effects:
How Money Influences Open Source Projects
and its Contributors
LinuxTag 2007 Berlin, Track „Building and Management of Communities“
June 1st 2007, Matthias Stuermer, ETH Zürich & /ch/open, mstuermer@ethz.ch
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June 1st 2007
Crowding Effects: How Money Influences Open Source Projects and its Contributors
Content
1. Different Perspectives on Community Building
2. About Economics, Motivation and Crowding-Out
3. Incentive Systems in Open Source Communities
4. Debian/dunc-tank and Google Summer of Code
5. Conclusions
3
June 1st 2007
Crowding Effects: How Money Influences Open Source Projects and its Contributors
Content
1. Different Perspectives on Community Building
2. About Economics, Motivation and Crowding-Out
3. Incentive Systems in Open Source Communities
4. Debian/dunc-tank and Google Summer of Code
5. Conclusions
4
June 1st 2007
Crowding Effects: How Money Influences Open Source Projects and its Contributors
Macro
Best practices of successful OSS projects
Some hints based on anecdotal evidence
Micro
Interaction between actors: social behavior
Human behavior: Crowding-out of intrinsic motivation
Macro and Micro Perspective on Communities
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June 1st 2007
Crowding Effects: How Money Influences Open Source Projects and its Contributors
Best Practices of Successful OSS Projects
Modular structure of the code
Documentation for different stakeholders
Controlled release management
Efficient collaboration platform
Regular physical meetings
Real-world organization such as a foundation
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June 1st 2007
Crowding Effects: How Money Influences Open Source Projects and its Contributors
Some hints based on anecdotal evidence
Structure follows problems
re-act, not pro-act
→
Openness for newcomers, new ideas, new leaders
Do provide incentives for writing documentation
→ More about OSS leadership and preconditions for new OSS
projects: Stuermer, 2005
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June 1st 2007
Crowding Effects: How Money Influences Open Source Projects and its Contributors
Content
1. Different Perspectives