IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mib/wpaper/166.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

If not for money for what? Digging into the OS/FS contributors’ motivations

Author

Listed:
  • Graziella Marzi

Abstract

This paper analyses the data collected by two of the most significant surveys on the Open Source Software (OSS) contributors’ motivations with the aim of assessing if in the OSS products circulation we can recognise the characteristics of the modern way of giving, suggested by Godbout (2000). The analysis of the information collected seems to confirm that the intrinsic motivations (social/community and political) prevail over the extrinsic ones (monetary and signalling) when developers decide to join and stay in the OS community and that the feeling of reciprocity is shared by the majority of the community members. Therefore the OSS product circulation seems to fit into the characteristics of the gift circulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Graziella Marzi, 2009. "If not for money for what? Digging into the OS/FS contributors’ motivations," Working Papers 166, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Jul 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:166
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper166.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Some Simple Economics of Open Source," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 197-234, June.
    2. Graziella Marzi, 2007. "Some Policy Issues on Open Source and Proprietary Software," Working Papers 133, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2007.
    3. Bronwyn H. Hall, 2007. "Patents and patent policy," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 23(4), pages 568-587, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dorota Celińska, 2016. "Who is forked on GitHub? Collaboration among Open Source developers," Working Papers 2016-15, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Oldham & Stephen Hall & Oscar Forero, 2013. "Biological Diversity in the Patent System," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-16, November.
    2. Rockett, Katharine, 2010. "Property Rights and Invention," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 315-380, Elsevier.
    3. Roberto Hernández-Chea & Pratheeba Vimalnath & Nancy Bocken & Frank Tietze & Elisabeth Eppinger, 2020. "Integrating Intellectual Property and Sustainable Business Models: The SBM-IP Canvas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-30, October.
    4. Jacqmin, Julien, 2018. "Why are some online courses more open than others?," MPRA Paper 89929, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    6. Josh Lerner, 2005. "The Scope of Open Source Licensing," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 20-56, April.
    7. Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo & Krichel, Thomas, 2010. "The creation of internet communities: A brief history of on-line distribution of working papers through NEP, 1998-2010," MPRA Paper 27085, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Leonard F.S. Wang & Arijit Mukherjee, 2014. "Patent Protection, Innovation and Technology Licensing," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3-4), pages 245-254, December.
    9. Bitzer, Jürgen & Geishecker, Ingo, 2010. "Who contributes voluntarily to OSS? An investigation among German IT employees," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 165-172, February.
    10. Arthur Schram & Boris Van Leeuwen & Theo Offerman, 2013. "Superstars Need Social Benefits: An Experiment on Network Formation," Working Papers 1306, Departament Empresa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, revised Jul 2013.
    11. Hans K. Hvide & Benjamin F. Jones, 2018. "University Innovation and the Professor's Privilege," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1860-1898, July.
    12. Fabio M. Manenti & Stefano Comino & Marialaura Parisi, 2005. "From Planning to Mature: on the Determinants of Open Source Take-Off," Industrial Organization 0507006, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 29 Sep 2005.
    13. Jing Wang & Gen Li & Kai-Lung Hui, 2022. "Monetary Incentives and Knowledge Spillover: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3549-3572, May.
    14. Kevin J. Boudreau & Andrei Hagiu, 2009. "Platform Rules: Multi-Sided Platforms as Regulators," Chapters, in: Annabelle Gawer (ed.), Platforms, Markets and Innovation, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. David, Paul A. & Shapiro, Joseph S., 2008. "Community-based production of open-source software: What do we know about the developers who participate?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 364-398, December.
    16. Liuan Wang & Lu (Lucy) Yan & Tongxin Zhou & Xitong Guo & Gregory R. Heim, 2020. "Understanding Physicians’ Online-Offline Behavior Dynamics: An Empirical Study," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 537-555, June.
    17. Luigi Di Gaetano, 2015. "A Model of corporate donations to open source under hardware–software complementarity," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 24(1), pages 163-190.
    18. Stam, Wouter, 2009. "When does community participation enhance the performance of open source software companies?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1288-1299, October.
    19. Thierry BURGER-HELMCHEN & Claude GUITTARD, 2008. "Are Users The Next Entrepreneurs? A Case Study On The Video Game Industry," Working Papers of BETA 2008-14, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    20. Dolata, Ulrich, 2014. "Märkte und Macht der Internetkonzerne: Konzentration - Konkurrenz - Innovationsstrategien," Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers 2014-04, University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    open source software; reciprocity; gift economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L17 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Open Source Products and Markets
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:166. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Matteo Pelagatti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpmibit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.