[luau] Motivations in Open Source Communities

[tburns at despammed.com]

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 "Motivations in Open Source Communities"
 January 6, 2003  -  10:30am
 POST 126, UH-Manoa
 with
 Karim Lakhani,
 MIT and Boston Consulting Group

 Free/open source software (F/OSS) is software for which the
 human-readable source code is made available to the user of the
 software, who can then modify the code in order to fit the software
 to the user's needs.  When source code is made fully accessible
 programmers can read it, modify it, and redistribute it, thereby
 improving and adapting the software. In this manner the software
 evolves at a rate unmatched by traditional proprietary software.
 For many years free/open source software has been building
 momentum.  Beginning amidst the technical cultures that produced
 the Internet and World Wide Web, it is now causing quite a stir in
 the commercial world as large software corporations are finding
 themselves competing against commercially available open source
 software.

 Preliminary results of a survey of open source participants
 suggests that: ? Participants note extremely high levels of
 creativity in their projects. ? Having fun, enhancing skills,
 access to source code and user needs drive contributions to the
 Open Source community. Defeating proprietary software companies is
 not a major motivator. ? The Open Source community is truly global
 in composition with respondents coming from 35 countries. ? Most
 participants dedicated at least 10 hours per week in their shared
 programming efforts ? Contrary to popular belief, the open source
 community is mostly comprised of highly skilled IT professionals
 who have on average over 10 years of programming experience.

 This free and open source software movement has piqued interest
 among scholars in disciplines ranging from sociology to economics
 to social psychology, and has raised questions in fields of
 application ranging from innovation processes to strategic
 management.  As an aid to these scholars, the Free / Open Source
 Research Community has been established at MIT.  By opening its
 research databases, it will establish a community of information
 exchange that will lead to a greater understanding of open source
 and it's applications.

 Join Karim R. Lakhani as he discusses motivations in open source
 communities.  Karim is a doctoral student at the MIT Sloan School
 of Management and a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. He
 is a co-founder of the MIT Open Source Research Project and runs
 the MIT based Open Source Research Community website. His research
 at MIT is focused on the management of technological innovation
 with a specific focus on coordination and innovation in open source
 communities. His work at BCG is focused on the intersection of
 emerging technologies, intellectual property and new organization
 forms. He has a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Management
 from McMaster University, Canada, and a Masters in Technology and
 Policy from MIT. Previously he worked at GE Medical Systems.



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