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Political Economy, the Internet and FL/OSS
Development
Robin Mansell and Evangelia Berdou
Abstract Despite the growing amount of research on Free/Libre/Open Source
Software (FL/OSS) development, there is little insight into how structural factors
associated with institutions influence the patterns of software developer activity in
this area. This chapter examines some of the dynamics of the development of this
type of software and the extent to which these dynamics are associated with fea-
tures of the gift economy as is frequently suggested in the literature. Drawing on an
empirical analysis of contributors to the GNOME FL/OSS project, we suggest that
greater attention should be given to the emergence of a mixed economy in which
features of the exchange economy come to the fore with implications for the power
relationships among those contributing to FL/OSS.
Keywords Communities of practice ·Exchange economy ·Open
source ·FL/OSS ·Gift economy ·GNOME ·Internet dynamics ·Political
economy
Introduction
There is a growing amount of research on Free Libre/Open Source Software
(FL/OSS) development. Despite this, we still have a rather fragmented view of
how structural factors associated with institutions influence the patterns of soft-
ware developer activity in this area. What are some of the institutional dynamics
of the development of this particular type of software? Are these dynamics mainly
associated with features of the ‘gift economy’ such as a strong voluntary ethos
and a deeply rooted cooperative spirit, as is frequently suggested in the literature?
R. Mansell (B)
London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK
e-mail: r.e.mansell@lse.ac.uk
J. Hunsinger et al. (eds.), International Handbook of Internet Research,
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-9789-8_19, C
!Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
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Should we conclude that features of the ‘exchange economy’ such as the hierarchi-
cal structuring of economic power are evaded by most of the participants in FL/OSS
developer communities?
In this chapter we present an examination of patterns of contribution and ‘main-
tainership’ in a large FL/OSS project. The results provide a basis for considering
the extent to which structural factors such as institutional support can be taken as an
indication of economic power and as important features of the emerging dynamic
of FL/OSS development. We suggest that a careful assessment of the dynamic of
FL/OSS requires a detailed empirical analysis of the different patterns of software
contributors, depending upon whether their contributions are voluntary or paid. We
reflect upon the distinctiveness of the patterns of contribution and on some of their
implications.
Apoliticaleconomyperspectiveissometimesregardedasbeingantitheticalto
theoretical traditions that focus on the highly situated nature of the activities of
individuals and their communities of practice in the FL/OSS area. However, as the
analysis in this chapter suggests, there can be a productive interplay between these
traditions (see Mansell 2004). We link these two traditions in the investigation of the
case study which we present in the section ‘The Case of GNOME’ in order to reveal
aspects of developments in the FL/OSS arena that might otherwise remain hidden
from view. In the following section we highlight some of the theoretical insights
that a political economy perspective brings to the analysis of FL/OSS.
Determinations in FL/OSS Development
In the political economy tradition of research we are led, following Golding and
Murdock (1978), to approach questions relating to the dynamics of FL/OSS devel-
opment from a position that investigates whether there is the potential for inequality
to emerge in relationships between those contributing to this growing arena of soft-
ware development. If we acknowledge that social and economic relations are not
egalitarian within society as a whole, would we not expect such relations to be
present within the FL/OSS developer communities? From a political economy per-
spective, we might expect new articulations of power relations to emerge and shape
the activities of many of those who, nevertheless, remain deeply committed to reci-
procity and the sharing of knowledge through cooperation that characterises the ‘gift
economy’ relationships that have been documented in the literature (Kollock 1999;
Webe r 2 0 0 4; Lampe l a n d B h alla 20 0 7 ) .
Studies of FL/OSS development often emphasise the abundance and variety of
the contributions of developers but pay little heed to the structures and processes
of power that may be associated with the organisation of institutions with which
these individuals are associated. There are interesting features of the development
of FL/OSS that do not appear to be mediated by the values of market exchange. But
there may also be mediation by at least some of the features of exchange models of
the economy. These features may be visible if we orient our investigation to areas
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Political Economy and Free/Open Source Software
in which there may be conditions of scarcity – whether of money, skills, or time –
in relation to FL/OSS development (Mansell 1999). Conditions of scarcity might
be expected to give rise to articulations of power that create tensions within the
communities of software developers.
At its core, a political economy perspective on FL/OSS should be particularly
concerned with the specific institutional circumstances under which the software
is being developed (Mansell 2004). Research highlighting the voluntary aspects of
FL/OSS communities has its parallel in research on the Internet that assumes that the
present-day generation of the Internet ‘automatically’ empowers people to engage
in new social and economic relationships. While the Internet may be characterised
as a postmodern medium (Murphy 2002; Poster 2001), as being technologically
progressive (Patelis 2000), or as a new public space for communities (Wellman
and Haythornthwaite 2002), these are not the only perspectives on its development.
Others have emphasised the commercialisation of the Internet and its characteris-
tics as a commercial space for advertisers and new media businesses (Ettema and
Whitney, 1994; Roscoe 1999; Webster and Phalen, 1997). Like other forms of medi-
ation, the Internet is being socially constructed (Livingstone 2002; Lievrouw and
Livingstone 2006; Miller and Slater 2000). This construction is likely to favour cer-
tain social and economic values over others (Castells 2001). David’s (2001) review
of the origins of the Internet demonstrates the extent to which policy intervention by
the US government played a major role in encouraging the flat configuration of the
Internet Protocol, but this does not mean that this configuration will always remain
in place (David 2007). Choices about the values, such as the flat, non-discriminatory
design of the Internet Protocol associated with the absence of hierarchy and with
collaboration and sharing, are being contested by those favouring discriminatory
treatment of Internet traffic, for example, in the interests of efficiency and quality of
service.
Similarly, in the case of FL/OSS, power is embedded in the institutions associ-
ated with its development and this software is also being socially constructed by a
wide range of participants with different values, skill levels, employment arrange-
ments, etc. Dalle et al. (2005) provide survey-based evidence suggesting that there
are many potential variations and patterns in the roles and activities of these partici-
pants. von Hippel and Lakhani (2000) also found substantial variations in the levels
of contributions to software projects by software developers. These studies sug-
gest that there is something considerably more complicated about the structuring
of FL/OSS communities than a gift exchange explanation can provide. Like other
new media, FL/OSS is developing within capitalism and it is likely that there will
be a blending of features of the older and newer modes of software development,
especially when software is being developed and used in relatively large-scale and
widely dispersed contexts.
Contributors to the analysis of the political economy of the media and com-
munication industries from Smythe (1960) to Garnham (1986) have paid close
attention to emerging structures and hierarchies of power. If resources of various
kinds are scarce and insofar as power is unequally distributed in society, then the key
issues are how those scarce resources are controlled and with what consequences.
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Although, FL/OSS is being developed within the broader context of capitalism and
of the exchange economy, we follow Garnham in insisting that this context should
not be regarded as an overwhelming determination. As Garnham put, it “there is
then, and this cannot be sufficiently stressed, no necessary coincidence between the
effects of the capitalist process proper and the ideological needs of the dominant
class” (emphasis added) (Garnham 1986: 23). The values and needs for institu-
tional support, for example, of the most active FL/OSS developers may differ from
those with more peripheral involvement and their need for institutional support may
also differ as a result. There may be many other variations as well. Therefore, empir-
ical research is needed to suggest how power is structured and differentiated within
the communities of developers who participate in FL/OSS (Garnham 2000; Melody
1994).
To und e r s tand the s e s p ecific ci r c u mstanc e s i n t he case of F L / O SS we nee d a n
analysis of how values and control processes are becoming embedded in the insti-
tutions and procedures adopted by participants in FL/OSS communities. The need
to seek ways of differentiating between participants is emphasised in approaches
to innovation associated more generally with new information and communica-
tion technologies (ICTs). Freeman (1992), Freeman and Louça (2001), for example,
argued that when new technologies emerge, their widespread appropriation begins
to challenge the hegemony of earlier modes of social and economic organisation. In
the case of FL/OSS he might not be surprised by the emergence of the values asso-
ciated with the gift economy. He argued that an emergent technological paradigm,
such as that associated with new ICTs (and therefore with FL/OSS) may involve a
new set of principles or values or common sense practices, but that this would not
necessarily mean that new values and practices become the dominant ones. Instead,
both the new and the old may mutate, recede, or become dominant. At any given
time the new combinations of values and practices need to be investigated through
empirical studies to provide insight into the process of change. Thus, we need empir-
ical studies of the many contexts in which FL/OSS is being developed (David and
Shapiro 2008). We suggest that research needs to give greater attention not only to
micro-processes involved but also to the links between these and the development
of institutions and their associated power relations.
As is the case in the ‘administrative’ tradition of research on older media and
communication industries (Melody and Mansell, 1983), the predominant focus in
the study of the Internet and FL/OSS development has been to develop a rather
unproblematised account of the Internet’s growth and of the new institutions of gov-
ernance that are emerging. We know from research in the media and communication
field that new ICTs are implicated in many contradictory ways in enabling or dis-
abling various forms of sociability (Lievrouw and Livingstone 2006; Silverstone,
1999; Silverstone and Hirsch 1992). There seems to be no reason to assume that
software should be different. We also know from research in the information sys-
tems field that power and negotiation are important aspects of the development of
new kinds of network relationships, including those associated with FL/OSS (Koch
and Schneider 2002). Yet in studies of communities of practice, and especially those
focusing on software development processes, issues of power are being addressed
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Political Economy and Free/Open Source Software
only indirectly and partially (Berdou 2003). Two of the major contributors to this
literature, Lave and Wenger (1991: 42), have acknowledged that “unequal relations
of power must be included more systematically...”intheanalysisofthesecom-
munities. Until recently this neglect of power was still a feature of this tradition of
research (Wenger 1999; Fox 2000).
The study of communities or networks of practice is helping to identify how
knowledge accumulates and is shared in FL/OSS contexts (see, for example, Samer
and Wasko McLure 2002), but again with little attention to power relationships.
Bergquist and Ljungberg (2001) have addressed issues of unequal participation
and power in FL/OSS communities, but much of the literature assumes the spread
of an all-pervasive gift-giving, non-hierarchical culture (Kollock 1999; Raymond
2001a). Bergquist and Ljungberg (2001: 315) argue, in contrast, that “some of the
user/developers experience power relationships that are expressed as an elitism of
the inner circle and exercised as the right to hinder a person in contributing to the
common good”.
In summary, the FL/OSS development model is regarded by some analysts as
acounterpointtothehegemonyofthepoweroftraditionalproprietarysoftware
producers (Bezroukov 1999; Feller and Fitzgerald 2002; Raymond 2001b). It may
indeed be a new platform for user-driven innovation (von Hippel 2002) and it
may provide a platform for a wide range of new business models (Mansell and
Steinmueller 2000; Feller and Fitzgerald 2002) as well as offering a new mode of
online collaborative and distributed working (Bezroukov 1999; Feller and Fitzgerald
2002; Gallivan 2001; Ljundgberg 2000; Moon and Sproull 2002). However, if we
are to understand the dynamics that are at work in FL/OSS communities we need
to deepen and extend the work of those who have begun their investigations from a
political economy perspective (see, for example, Weber 2004; Healy and Schussman
2003; Lancashire 2001).
In the next section, we take the example of the FL/OSS GNOME project as
a case study through which to begin the task of exploring the distinctiveness of
software developer contributions and the way differences may be associated with
scarce resources such as skill and with institutional affiliation. The latter is exam-
ined by focusing on the governance institution created for GNOME and the former
by analysing the contributions of those who develop and maintain various modules
of the GNOME project’s software.
The Case of GNOME
The results of an examination of patterns of contribution and maintainership in a
FL/OSS project are presented in this section. Contributors to the GNOME project1
aim to create a complete desktop environment and a development platform for
1See http://www.gnome.org.
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operating systems such as Linux and Unix.2Astudywasundertakenby
Berdou (2007) to investigate the patterns of contribution between affiliated and
non-affiliated contributors to GNOME, focussing specifically on the GNOME
Foundation members and on those involved in the project’s maintainer network.
The study gave particular attention to those who not only contribute software code
to the project but also involved in more peripheral roles such as translation, docu-
mentation, or conference organization. In this section, we highlight the central roles
of paid software developers in the GNOME project and the characteristics of mem-
bers of the volunteer and peripheral communities participating in the project. We
also draw attention to interesting differences between paid contributors who are
employed to work on GNOME and those who are employed to contribute to other
FL/OSS projects.
Background to the Empirical Study
The GNOME Foundation was established in 2000.3It is comprised of a Board of
Directors, an Executive Director, an Advisory Board, and the GNOME Membership
Committee. The Foundation coordinates GNOME releases, specifies which projects
belong in GNOME, and acts as the official voice of the project community. At
the time the investigation of GNOME was conducted (June 2005), the Foundation
had 335 members. Membership, which is renewed every 2 years, is available to
individuals who have contributed a ‘non-trivial’ improvement to the project.
The extent of an applicant’s contribution is confirmed by a long-term GNOME
contributor and status as a member is decided by the membership committee. A
Foundation member can stand for election to the Board of Directors, vote in elec-
tions, and issue or approve referenda. In examining GNOME at the level of the
Foundation, we are therefore considering the characteristics of experienced con-
tributors whose work has been recognized by others and who are interested in
participating in the institutional and administrative aspects of the GNOME project.
The empirical results set out in the following discussion are based on data col-
lected using a questionnaire which was distributed at the GNOME Foundation meet-
ing in GUADEC 2006 (GNOME Users and Developers Conference) in Stuttgart,
Germany, and by email.4The survey resulted in 199 responses (152 via email and
47 at the conference) from the 335 members of the Foundation, yielding a 59.4%
response rate.
2See research on the dynamics of commercialization and peripheral participation in mature,
community-led free/open source software projects, Berdou (2007).
3See http://foundation.gnome.org/
4See Berdou (2007) for details of the methodology. Questions were asked about members’ overall
and principal areas/modules of contribution, affiliation, GUADEC attendance, city of residence.
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Political Economy and Free/Open Source Software
As indicated above, this research also examined participants in the maintainer
network. Maintainers in FL/OSS projects assume a variety of duties and responsibil-
ities. A maintainer is responsible for answering queries and responding to problem
reports and is usually the point person for coordinating with the individual(s) in
charge of software releases. Maintainers are highly skilled and are recognized
authorities in their area of expertise. As such, they influence the technical direction
of their project, providing the vision behind its development. Maintainers have the
right to peer-review, approve, and incorporate patches into the code base. In some
instances an individual may have the right to commit changes to the code base, but
it is generally considered ‘bad form’ to forgo a maintainer’s approval. Given the
importance of the role of the maintainer, instead of using the term ‘maintenance’
which may suggest that the maintenance of code is a passive activity, we use the
term ‘maintainership’ in this chapter.
In order to examine the patterns of maintainership activity, the research focused
on the 2.10.0 release of GNOME and, specifically, on the Platform and Desktop
Sources. In GNOME, the names of the maintainers are usually included in a text
file called ‘MAINTAINER(S)’ which can be found in the release tar archives.5The
data compiled as the basis for the analysis in this chapter included 110 modules
maintained by 92 individuals.6As in the case of the GNOME Foundation mem-
bers, the analysis of GNOME maintainers focuses on experienced and committed
contributors. Unlike the case of the Foundation members where non-coders can par-
ticipate, the maintainer network consists only of programmers and is therefore more
technical in character.
The survey respondents were invited to report modules/projects to which they
had made a contribution. For analytical purposes, the modules were grouped into
five hierarchical areas of development. The same scheme was applied for the
classification of maintained modules.
Core/Platform modules.Thesecomprisethemaindevelopmentlibrariesofthe
GNOME platform. These include the graphical libraries, the component model, the
accessibility libraries, Configuration and Lockdown, printing, and the main gnome
desktop library, libgnomeui.
Main Desktop modules. These include the main components of the GNOME
desktop environment, such as the file manager, panel, and window manager as well
as Evolution, GNOME’s primary groupware and personal information manager, and
the multimedia framework (Gstreamer).
Secondary desktop modules. These include secondary libraries and secondary
elements of the GNOME desktop as well as the end-user productivity applications
included in the GNOME release.
5A tar archive, or tarball in jargon terms, is a group of files compressed together as one, which is
used to package source code distributions.
6The data were validated by two long-term GNOME contributors. See Berdou (2007) for details
of the methodology. This data coding scheme was also validated by two long-term contributors.
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Development tools and processes.Thiscomprisestoolsfordevelopmentaswell
as tasks related to releases, issues of quality control, and unspecified bug fixes.
Peripheral activities. This comprises the non-coding aspects of contribution,
such as documentation, translation, and artwork.
Patterns of Contribution and Participation of GNOME Foundation
Members
The analysis of the GNOME data indicates a clear split in the distribution of vol-
unteers and paid contributors. The respondents in the sample reported that 98 were
volunteers and 101 were affiliated individuals.7Furthermore, as shown in Fig. 1, the
data allow for a more detailed categorization of paid developers based on whether
they have been employed to contribute exclusively to GNOME, other FL/OSS
projects, or both to GNOME and other FL/OSS projects.
The data indicate that GNOME has a rich ecology of contributing organizations.
The paid developers in the sample were employed by 41 institutions, including
small- and medium-sized enterprises, large companies, and research institutions.
The three most important employers were Novell Inc. and Red Hat Inc. with
16 developers each, and Sun Microsystems Inc. with 12 developers working on
GNOME and on FL/OSS development. The two biggest companies represented in
the sample, IBM and Nokia, were participating only marginally in the project, at
least at the level of the Foundation, with one contributor each. The sample also fea-
tures a considerable number of developers, eight in total, who were self-employed
and were undertaking subcontracting jobs.
Figure 2 shows a breakdown of the involvement of the respondents according
to their main area of contribution, i.e. the module/activity they reported to has been
most active in during the 6 months leading up to the survey. What stands out in Fig. 2
is the overwhelming presence of paid developers in Core/Platform modules and the
very strong presence of volunteers in Secondary Desktop and Peripheral Activities.
Specifically, 85.7% (53.6 + 32.1%) of all the contributors involved in Core/Platform
Modules are developers employed to work on GNOME and more than 60% of the
contributors who were primarily active in Peripheral Activities are volunteers. In
Secondary Desktop, 64.1% of the respondents are volunteers and in Main Desktop,
more than 70% of developers are employed.
Figure 3 presents the distribution of the respondents’ effort in the five main areas
of contribution. Volunteers and contributors paid to work on FL/OSS but not on
GNOME have very similar patterns of participation: they contribute equally inten-
sively to Secondary Desktop (42%) and Peripheral Activities (35.7%). Similarly,
7‘Affiliated’ or ‘paid’ refers in this context to a developer employed by an organization actively
involved in FL/OSS development. A volunteer is a contributor who is not employed by such an
organization. This therefore does not mean that all volunteers are unemployed, but simply that
they are not remunerated to participate in FL/OSS development.
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Political Economy and Free/Open Source Software
dedicated GNOME contributors (Paid to work on GNOME and Paid to work on
GNOME and on FL/OSS) appear to have nearly identical patterns of involvement
in four out of five areas of development (Core/Platform, Main Desktop, Secondary
Desktop, and Peripheral Activities).
In the following, we examine whether these differences are statistically signif-
icant. Table 1 reports the results of a cross-tabulation of the results for volunteers
and affiliated contributors by main area of contribution. The cross-tabulation has
aχ2value (df=8andN=199) of 53.372, p<0.0001, indicating a significant asso-
ciation between the selected groups and the specified areas of development. The
adjusted residuals inform us that the most significant patterns of association are
to be found between volunteers and Core/Platform modules (−4), volunteers and
Main Desktop modules (−2.4), volunteers and Secondary Desktop modules (2.9),
volunteers and Peripheral Activities (2.3) employed to work on GNOME and on
GNOME and FL/OSS and Core/Platform modules (5.8) employed to work on
GNOME and on GNOME and FL/OSS and Secondary Desktop (−3.9) as well as
Peripheral Activities (−3.1). There is a larger proportion of paid developers who
contribute to Core/Platform and Main Desktop modules than would be expected if
the variables were independent. By contrast, volunteers clearly contribute more to
Fig. 1 GNOME Foundation respondents according to their employment status
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
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Fig. 2 Involvement of paid and volunteer contributors according to main area of contribution
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
Peripheral Activities and to the Secondary Desktop. The only area of development
that is significant for developers paid to work on FL/OSS is Core/Platform (−2.3).
We nex t c o nsider h ow these r e s u l ts rela t e t o G NOME ev ent atte n d a nce.
Figure 4 indicates how frequently volunteers and paid developers participate in
GUADEC, the GNOME Users and Developers’ Conference, the leading event
for the developer community. Figure 4 shows that 64.5% (38.2+26.3%) of those
who are paid to work on GNOME have participated in all three GUADEC con-
ferences between 2003 and 2005, whereas 66% of volunteers and 57% of those
contributors hired to develop in FL/OSS but not to work on GNOME have not par-
ticipated in any event. The Chi-Square statistic has a value of χ2(df=6andN=199)
51.425, p<0.0001, indicating that the relationship between affiliation and conference
attendance is indeed significant.
The adjusted residuals in Table 2, which include the results of the events affilia-
tion cross-tabulation, allow us to identify the most significant patterns of attendance.
There is a considerable proportion of volunteers who have not attended any event
between 2003 and 2005 (5.5) and a very small proportion of volunteers who have
attended all three events (−4). By contrast, the adjusted residuals for paid devel-
opers suggest that the majority of the members of this group rarely miss a major
community event (4.7 for 3 attended GUADECs and −6.5 for non-attendance).
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Fig. 3 Distribution of effort by group at the short-term level
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
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Fig. 4 Participation in GUADECs taking place between 2003–2005 for volunteers and affiliated
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
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Tabl e 3 i n d icates t h e s i gnifica n c e l eve l f o r eve n t a ttenda n c e b y combin a t i ons of
groups. One interesting pattern is that between volunteers and those employed to
work on FL/OSS but not on GNOME. The analysis shows the differences between
the two groups to be insignificant. But it confirms that the most important differ-
ences are between volunteers and those employed to work on GNOME, and those
employed to work on FL/OSS and those employed to work on GNOME and on
GNOME and FL/OSS.
We loo k n e xt at the wa y t h ese resu l t s c ompare w i t h t he analy s i s o f mainta i n e rship
patterns.
Tabl e 1 Main area of contribution, affiliated and volunteers
Main area of contribution
Core/
platform
Main
desktop
Secondary
desktop
Development
tools and
processes
Peripheral
activities Total
Vo l u n t e e r s C o u n t 4 8 4 1 1 0 3 5 9 8
Percentage
within the
Group 4.1 8.2 41.8 10.2 35.7 100.0
Percentage
within the
Area 14.3 28.6 64.1 43.5 62.5 49.2
Adjusted
Residual −4−2.4 2.9 −0.6 2.3
Paid to work
on GNOME
and GNOME
and FL/OSS
Count 24 16 11 11 11 73
Percentage
within the
Group 32.9 21.9 15.1 15.1 15.1 100.0
Percentage
within the
Area 85.7 57.1 17.2 47.8 19.6 36.7
Adjusted
Residual 5.8 2.4 −3.9 1.2 −3.1
Paid to work
on FL/OSS
Count 0 4 12 2 10 28
Percentage
within the
Group 0.0 14.3 42.9 7.1 35.7 100.0
Percentage
within the
Area 0.0 14.3 18.8 8.7 17.9 14.1
Adjusted
Residual −2.3 0 1.3 −0.8 1
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
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Tabl e 2 Number of GUADECs attended by affiliated and volunteers
Number of attended GUADECS
(2003-2005)
01 2 3
Vo l u n t e e r s C o u n t 6 5 16 1 2 5
Percentage within the Group 66.3 16.3 12.2 5.1
Percentage within the Event 69.9 43.2 31.6 16.1
Adjusted Residual 5.5 −0.8 −2.4 −4
Paid to work on
GNOME and
GNOME and
FL/OSS Count 12 17 21 23
Percentage within the Group 16.4 23.3 28.8 31.5
Percentage within the Event 12.9 45.9 55.3 74.2
Adjusted Residual −6.5 1.3 2.6 4.7
Paid to work on
FL/OSS Count 16 4 5 3
Percentage within the Group 57.1 14.3 17.9 10.7
Percentage within the no of
Events 17.2 10.8 13.2 9.7
Adjusted Residual 1.2 −0.6 −0.2 −0.8
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
Tabl e 3 Patterns of GUADEC conference attendance by volunteers and affiliated for different
group combinations
Paid to work on
FL/OSS
Paid to work
only on
GNOME
Paid to work
on GNOME
and FL/OSS
Paid to work
on GNOME
and
GNOME
and FL/OSS
All
paid
Vo l u n t e e r s N o t s i g n i fi c a n t ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗ ∗∗∗
Paid to work on
FL/OSS ∗∗∗ Not significant ∗∗∗
Paid to work only on
GNOME Not significant
Source: GNOME Foundation survey, N=199.
∗∗∗, significant at p<0.001; ∗∗ , significant at p<0.01; ∗, significant at p<0.05.
Patterns of Maintainership
As in the case of the GNOME Foundation members, the GNOME main-
tainer network is characterized by an almost even split between affiliated and
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Fig. 5 Modules maintained
by affiliated and
non-affiliated developers
Source: Online search,
N=110 (modules).
non-affiliated8developers.9Specifically, the 2.10.0 release was done by 42 non-
affiliated and 50 affiliated maintainers. Figure 5 presents the distribution of main-
tainership activity between affiliated and non-affiliated developers. The figure shows
that 67 modules were exclusively maintained by affiliated developers, 36 mod-
ules were maintained solely by non-affiliated developers, and only 7 modules were
cooperatively maintained by affiliated and non-affiliated programmers.
As Fig. 6 indicates most of the Core/Platform and Main Desktop modules are
maintained exclusively by affiliated developers. This is consistent with the anal-
ysis of the data for the GNOME Foundation members’ network. In contrast to
the results for the Foundation members where Secondary Desktop (which included
Applications) was mostly developed by volunteers, however, maintainership in this
area is divided evenly between non-affiliated and affiliated contributors. At the same
time, non-affiliated developers appear to maintain more Periphe r a l modules, such
as the ones related to developer tools, documentation (grouped under ‘Other’).
The analysis of the significance of the relation between maintainership and affil-
iation concentrates on cases of exclusive maintainership.10 The Chi-Square test for
the cross-tabulation (see Table 4) of cases of exclusive maintainership with the
main areas of the code base has a value χ2(df=4andN=103) 12.071, p<0.05.
There is a connection between this type of maintainership and affiliation. A closer
look at each area of the code base reveals, however, that the relationships that are
statistically significant are only those for Core/Platform (adjusted residuals=−2,2)
and Other (Peripheral) Modules (adjusted residuals=−2.4,2.4). This indicates that
there is a significant association, one that could have not been observed by chance,
8As in the case of the GNOME Foundation members ‘affiliated’ or ‘paid’ refers in this context to
a developer employed by an organization involved in FL/OSS development.
9In terms of the overlap between the two networks there were 27 maintainers that were not
members of the GNOME Foundation and 42 maintainers that were not among the Foundation
respondents.
10This is necessary since taking into account all three categories of maintainership results in too
high a percent of expected frequencies under 5, resulting in a loss of statistical power (for an
explanation, see Field (2005)).
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Fig. 6 Modules maintained by affiliated and non-affiliated contributors in principal areas of
development
Source: Online search, N=110 (modules).
between exclusive maintainership and affiliation only in the cases of Core/Platform
and Other (Peripheral) Modules.
Another interesting relationship is that between affiliated and non-affiliated
developers and the number of modules maintained. To discover whether this rela-
tion is statistically significant, maintainers were divided into two groups: those who
maintained up to two modules and those maintaining more than two. The associa-
tion is significant at the p<0.05 level (Chi-Square (df=1, N=92) =5.650), which
indicates that the two variables are dependent. The odds ratios11 calculated on the
basis of counts indicated in Table 5 indicate that an affiliated developer is 4.5 times
more likely to maintain more than two modules than a non-affiliated developer.
Distinctiveness of GNOME Contributor Patterns
The analysis of the GNOME Foundation member survey data suggests that despite
the even split between paid developers and volunteers among its members, paid
developers who are employed to work on GNOME and on GNOME and on other
FL/OSS projects are more involved in the infrastructure aspects of the platform
(Core/Platform Modules) and of the desktop (Main Desktop Modules) than vol-
unteers. Volunteers, on the other hand, are concentrated in secondary areas of
11The calculation of the odds ratio allows us to gauge the effect size, how strong a relation is, for
categorical data. See Field (2005: 693).
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Political Economy and Free/Open Source Software
Tabl e 4 Exclusive maintainership (modules maintained exclusively by non-affiliated and modules
maintained exclusively by affiliated) with areas the modules belong in
Area of module maintained
Core/
Platform
Main
Desktop
Secondary
Desktop Applications Other Total
Maintained
exclusively
by non-
affiliated Count 9 4 9 7 7 36
Percentage
within the
Group 25.0 11.1 25.0 19.4 19.4 100.0
Percentage
within the
Area 23.1 20.0 45.0 50.0 70.0 35.0
Adjusted
Residual −2−1.6 1 1.3 2.4
Maintained
exclusively
by affiliated Count 30 16 11 7 3 67
Percentage
within the
Group 44.8 23.9 16.4 10.4 4.5 100.0
Percentage
within the
Area 76.9 80.0 55.0 50.0 30.0 65.0
Adjusted
Residual 2 1.6 −1−1.3 −2.4
Source: Online search, N=103 (modules).
Tabl e 5 Affiliation by number of modules maintained
Maintaining
up to two
modules
Maintaining
more than
two modules Total
Non-affiliated Count 39 3 42
Expected Count 34.7 7.3 42
Percentage within each Group 92.9 7.1 100.0
Percentage within each Group
category 51.3 18.8 45.7
Adjusted Residual 2.4 −2.4
Affiliated Count 37 13 50
Expected Count 41.3 8.7 50
Percentage within Volunteer vs.
affiliated 74.0 26.0 100.0
Percentage within each Group
Category 48.7 81.3 54.3
Adjusted Residual -2.4 2.4
Source: Online search, N=92 (maintainers).
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R. Mansell and E. Berdou
development, such as in Secondary Desktop Modules that include many user-
oriented applications, and in Peripheral Activities that include non-coding activities.
The volunteer patterns of contribution and conference attendance are not dissimilar
from those of developers who are employed to work on FL/OSS projects other than
GNOME. This suggests that the most important differentiating factor between the
four groups (Volunteers, Paid to work on GNOME, Paid to work on GNOME and
FL/OSS, and paid to work on FL/OSS) is being employed to work on GNOME.
The patterns of maintainership between affiliated and non-affiliated developers
are consistent with the patterns of contribution for the GNOME Foundation net-
work. Developers affiliated with an organization involved in FL/OSS development
maintain predominantly Core/Platform modules. Non-affiliated developers, on the
other hand, maintain mostly Peri p h e ral Modules, that is, parts of the code base
that are associated with Development Tools. Paid developers also maintain more
modules than non-affiliated contributors. In addition, the absence of cooperatively
maintained modules between affiliated and non-affiliated developers supports the
argument that the two groups are quite distinct.
The analysis of the GNOME data indicates that the volunteer and affiliated com-
munities are distinctive and that institutional support is an important factor in the
continuous involvement of developers at the highest technical level and with respect
to their participation in the life of the GNOME community. Two important factors
need to be taken into account in drawing conclusions about the implications of these
results. First, paid developers often maintain code modules that they are not directly
paid to contribute to. This is especially the case for maintainers with strong commu-
nity ties. Second, there are other layers of institutional support that need to be further
investigated before we can fully understand the relationships between affiliation,
contribution, and maintenance. For instance, the process of identifying maintainers
and their affiliation indicated that many of them are associated with higher level
education and research institutions, either as students (many of whom were study-
ing at the postgraduate level) or employees, but the analysis in this chapter did not
take these types of affiliation into account.
Conclusion
The picture that emerges from the GNOME case study raises interesting issues with
respect to the relationship between gift and exchange economies. What this case
study suggests is that the ways in which the values and practices of both economies
are becoming intertwined with each other are suggestive of new power relationships,
some of which may be more consistent with those of the exchange economy. There
are differences in the extent and types of contributions to FL/OSS in the case of
GNOME that appear to be influenced to some extent by types of institutional affil-
iation, employment status, and skill levels. These differences may be explained by
emergent power relationships which operate at both the level of the micro-practices
of individual contributors within their communities of practice and at the level of
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Political Economy and Free/Open Source Software
governance institutions, such as those emerging within the GNOME Foundation.
There are also signs of hierarchy in the GNOME maintainers’ network where tacit
acknowledgement is given to the need to seek permission of maintainers when they
contribute code even when a developer has acquired the substantial level of expertise
needed to commit changes to the code base.
This chapter emphasises the need for further investigation of FL/OSS in terms
of the specific circumstances of its development. We have argued that power rela-
tionships need to be examined explicitly in the light of their articulation through
the features of the economy more generally. By examining the case of the GNOME
project, we gain a deeper understanding of some of the pressures favouring val-
ues and practices associated with the exchange economy but we also see evidence
of features of the gift economy. Further research is needed to explore how com-
panies operating within this increasingly mixed economy will fare as they seek to
further develop FL/OSS (see also Sharma et al. 2002). As its development scales
up, the resources of skill, money, and time are likely to experience various degrees
of scarcity. The way this is addressed by those involved with FL/OSS seems very
likely to lead to the continuing emergence of some of the attributes of the exchange
economy within the communities of practice that constitute the FL/OSS developer
communities.
As Lindblom has argued, “there remain, however, fundamental aspects of social
problem solving that not even a revolution in the technology of computation and
information processing can turn into scientific problems lying within the compe-
tence of persons of sufficient expertise” (Lindblom 1990: 9). If we regard FL/OSS
communities as a relatively new arena for social problem solving with respect to
the rights, obligations, and responsibilities of those who develop or use FL/OSS
platforms and applications, then we should not consider the question of power
relationships among the participants and institutions involved simply to be one
concerning those who have acquired FL/OSS experience through their various
contributions as coders, translators, or conference organizers.
FL/OSS is becoming ever more central to the infrastructure and operations of
ahugearrayofsocialandeconomicprocesses.Afailuretointerrogateitsstruc-
tural dynamics from a political economy perspective would leave the extent and
potential for changes in power relationships unexplored. Given the centrality of this
model of software development in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the
Internet Research community would be well advised to encourage research in this
tradition alongside the rich insights emerging from studies of the micro-practices
of those involved in the FL/OSS developer communities. It is essential to approach
claims embodied in utopian discourses that promise a better world due to technol-
ogy, in this case FL/OSS and its gift economy values, from a critical perspective that
acknowledges the reality of struggles for control of the technologies that mediate our
lives and in which the values of the exchange economy are embedded. As Mattelart
(1996/2000, p. 107) puts it, “the emphasis placed on mediations and interactions
must not cause us to forget that contemporary universalisation of a productive
and technoscientific system remains, more than ever, marked by the inequality of
exchanges”.
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Even though FL/OSS benefits from many voluntary contributions associated
with the gift economy, like software developed within the traditions of the pro-
prietary software model which is aligned with the values of market exchange, the
FL/OSS also has a high fixed cost, especially in relation to the more technically
demanding aspects of development. To produce the first copy of a major release still
requires substantial resources, a considerable component of which is contributed by
the employees of companies as our case study has shown. The case study reported
in this chapter raises many questions about how voluntary effort can be mobilised
when the scale of developer activity increases and about how effectively this emerg-
ing mixed economy will operate. Future research is needed to discern the dominant
values and power relations and what their consequences will be.
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