Comment For the love of Intellectual Wanking (Score 2, Insightful) 252
While it's refreshing to learn that Open Source has matured enough to garner some interest in the academic Economics community, the author's admitted lack of familiarity with the subject of his thesis--that exotic and enigmatic creature, the Open Source Developer, comes through. Less pretentious jargon in the vein of "the gift-economy" (is this some economist appropriation of Claude Levi-Strauss that I missed in the sixties?) and more pragmatic observation would have been welcome.
1)The importance of the English language. Completely underestimated in this study. Why else would France, a very Socialist economy with a 35-hour work week have such a low level of Open Source activity? Compared to Sweden and Germany, the English language proficiency in France is extremely low.
2)Personal fulfilment. Most dedicated Open Source developers share a joy in creation. Ego is involved, but not so much as related to recognition from others, but a desire to prove something to themselves.
3)Desire for a community of peers. Once you create something you want to be able to share it with people capable of appreciating it. If your expertise is pretty obscure or high level, you're going to have to go to an online virtual community to find people with the same interest or proficiency.
4)The Corporate IT world is a cubicle wasteland. From a personal point of view, this is hardly a validating world for engineers. Even at so-called "technology" companies, it's rare to see engineers promoted to any positions of true importance. It's all about marketing sales and MBAs. Engineers tend to see something in scientific terms, things either work or they don't. This makes most of them poor players in corporate politics. Even if they are any good, they are likely to be pretty turned off by the process. How many technology decisions are dictated by top-down partnerships, which make absolutely zero sense from a technological point of view? Far too many.
If I were to profile the Open Source developer, the person most susceptible to the phenomenon would be an individual with something to prove, someone not experiencing any (or much) fulfilment in their day job, where they feel isolated, not in contact with their true professional peers, someone who is given insufficient control over and ownership of their work.
Abstract economic theory is well and good, but it very often fails to credibly explain human behavior.
As for de-bunking myths about Open Source, a far more interesting story was Slashdot's post a week ago on Marc Fleury, leader of the JBoss project. http://www.jboss.org/vision.jsp. JBoss delivers Enterprise class software. You'll have to get past the J2EE jargon and the ego, but Marc makes some interesting points: he and his developers are mostly not students, they have worked in the corporate IT world, they do care making money, and thus have a vested interest in delivering solutions that meet the needs of the corporate IT community.
While I feel basic psychology as opposed to economics has far more to do with the source of Open Source contribution, economics has everything to do with Open Source success--but that's another thread :)
1)The importance of the English language. Completely underestimated in this study. Why else would France, a very Socialist economy with a 35-hour work week have such a low level of Open Source activity? Compared to Sweden and Germany, the English language proficiency in France is extremely low.
2)Personal fulfilment. Most dedicated Open Source developers share a joy in creation. Ego is involved, but not so much as related to recognition from others, but a desire to prove something to themselves.
3)Desire for a community of peers. Once you create something you want to be able to share it with people capable of appreciating it. If your expertise is pretty obscure or high level, you're going to have to go to an online virtual community to find people with the same interest or proficiency.
4)The Corporate IT world is a cubicle wasteland. From a personal point of view, this is hardly a validating world for engineers. Even at so-called "technology" companies, it's rare to see engineers promoted to any positions of true importance. It's all about marketing sales and MBAs. Engineers tend to see something in scientific terms, things either work or they don't. This makes most of them poor players in corporate politics. Even if they are any good, they are likely to be pretty turned off by the process. How many technology decisions are dictated by top-down partnerships, which make absolutely zero sense from a technological point of view? Far too many.
If I were to profile the Open Source developer, the person most susceptible to the phenomenon would be an individual with something to prove, someone not experiencing any (or much) fulfilment in their day job, where they feel isolated, not in contact with their true professional peers, someone who is given insufficient control over and ownership of their work.
Abstract economic theory is well and good, but it very often fails to credibly explain human behavior.
As for de-bunking myths about Open Source, a far more interesting story was Slashdot's post a week ago on Marc Fleury, leader of the JBoss project. http://www.jboss.org/vision.jsp. JBoss delivers Enterprise class software. You'll have to get past the J2EE jargon and the ego, but Marc makes some interesting points: he and his developers are mostly not students, they have worked in the corporate IT world, they do care making money, and thus have a vested interest in delivering solutions that meet the needs of the corporate IT community.
While I feel basic psychology as opposed to economics has far more to do with the source of Open Source contribution, economics has everything to do with Open Source success--but that's another thread
