Essay About Free Software Developers Work And Organization Of Their Contributions

How Free Software Developers Work
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How free software developers work
The mobilization of “distant communities”
Didier DEMAZIERE (CNRS, laboratoire Printemps, UVSQ)
FranÐ*ois HORN (CLERSE, IFRESI)
Nicolas JULLIEN (MARSOUIN)
Free software are programs distributed with their source code (the text of the program written
in a programming language that is comprehensible for humans) and with the authorization to
modify and redistribute them freely, which differentiates them radically from private or
“proprietary” software.
Their development is based on the participation of volunteers within a cooperative
organization that relies a great deal on the organizational facilities provided by the Internet.
This configuration leads to questions on the characteristics of the collective action that
enables the transition from individual voluntary commitments that are potentially volatile and
unstable to the completion of a collective production that involves continuity and
sustainability. The production of free software cannot be considered the contingent result of a
spontaneous convergence of individual, independent commitments. It presupposes certain
forms of motivation for the participants to work, who are in turn capable of ensuring a certain
continuity in their commitments and of coordinating the organization of their contributions.
Because even if a software program is a text, it is an “active” text that works insofar as it is
made up of a list of instructions that are automatically executed by a machine, which requires
an extremely strong coherency of the different parts of the text (Horn, 2004).
Empirical preliminary observations show that developers have a wide range of statuses
(students, employees of research centers or private companies engaged in activities related to
free software or not at all) This infers heterogeneous links between the activity of
developing free software and salaried work. The former can take place outside of working
(salaried) hours, exclusively or not, but it can also take place during working (salaried) hours
and thus can be, according to the case, hidden, tolerated, unofficial, official, required,
recognized or valued. The development of free software takes place within plural legal and
temporal systems.
These heterogeneous figures extend well beyond the scope of volunteer work and they
indicate also another stake in this productive activity: the cooperation between contributors
without which it would be impossible to develop a useable product. Yet, in general, these
contributors are not enrolled in the same organization, are dispersed, have computer-mediated
relationships via the Internet, and are not linked by the lines of an organization chart
(Gensollen, 2004)
The absence of direct, codified and prescribed interaction between the producers is
counterbalanced by sharing the sense of belonging to a specific group with a strong identity.
At least this is how we can interpret the repeated references to “free communities” on the part
of contributors. This indigenous terminology does not reveal its true meaning immediately,
but it provides a clue to understanding the way the collective activity is carried out in the
absence of organizational levers that usually make up the framework of work activities and
the participants at work.
The work of free software developers is therefore both an individual activity carried out in
extremely heterogeneous conditions and a collective action with original production methods.
We propose to analyze this work starting with the paradoxical notion of a “distant
community”, that aims to illustrate the tension between, on the one hand, the strength of the
sense of belonging to a specific world identifiable in the discourse of the participants and, on
the other hand, the distances that separate the contributors in terms of relationships, status,
and background. In doing this the aim is to produce a description, necessarily plural, of the
different forms of “distant communities” that enables the production of goods in unique social
and organizational conditions. More generally speaking, this notion points to methods of
coordination that combine two forms of collective action that are usually contrary and
antagonistic: a communitarian form based on the subjective feeling of belonging to the same
community and a form of partnership based on the coordination of common interests and
sharing of objectives (Tцnnies, 1887, Weber, 1921).
At first, we will examine the ways the individual participants organize themselves in order to
contribute to a project and we will focus on the forms of cooperation and coordination used to
deal with the constraints of efficiency and quality associated with the distribution of a
product.