This document summarizes a research paper on governing hybrid open source communities. It discusses how the structure and relations between developers and users in these communities are linguistically constructed. It also examines how internet-mediated "virtual" communities can be defined and how they differ from traditional hierarchical and volunteer communities. The document then summarizes the paper's theoretical framework and conclusions regarding changing patterns of motivation for volunteers and new categories of developers and users in open source software communities.

1. Governing
Hybrid
Open
Source
Community
Stephanie
Freeman,
PhD
Post
doc
Researcher,
INUSE
(h:p://inuse.fi)
Department
of
Management
and
InternaDonal
Business
Aalto
University
stephanie.freeman@aalto.fi

2. Freeman,
S.
2011.
Construc6ng
a
Community:
Myths
and
Reali6es
of
the
Open
Development
Model
• How
is
the
structure
and
membership
constella;on
of
the
community,
specifically
the
rela;on
between
developers
and
users
linguis;cally
constructed
in
hybrid
open
development?
• What
characterizes
Internet-­‐mediated
Mailing
list
discussion,
personal
interviews,
“virtual”
communi;es
and
how
can
web
page
wri;ngs,
email
exchanges,
field
they
be
defined?
How
do
they
differ
notes
and
other
historical
documents
from
hierarchical
forms
of
knowledge
produc;on
on
one
hand
and
from
Four
case
studies
inside
one:
tradi;onal
volunteer
communi;es
on
the
other?
OpenOffice.org
Groupware
project
OpenOffice.org
Lingucomponent
project
Four
Finnish
public
sector
user
organiza;ons
The
OpenOffice.org
website

3. Theore;cal
sensi;zing
concepts
• Collabora6ve
community
(Adler,
2006;
2007;
2007;
see
also
Adler
&
Hecksher,
2008;
Adler,
Kwon
&
Hecksher,
2008):
• Communi6es
of
prac6ce
(Lave
&
Wenger,
1991;
Holland
&
Lave,
2009;
Wenger,
1998)
• Community
as
objet-­‐oriented
ac6vity
(Engeström,
1987)
• Imagined
community
(Anderson,
1983;
cf.
Cohen,
1985;
Delanty,
2010;
Maffesoli,
1996)

4. Intermediary
concepts
used
for
developing
a
discursive-­‐rhetorical
approach
1. Cultural
and
discursive
psychology
(e.g.
Billig
Condor,
Edwards,
Gane,
Middleton
&
Radley
1988;
Harré,
1998;
Mulhauser
&
Harré,
1990;
Shofer,
1993),
2.
cri;cal
discourse
analysis
(e.g.
Fairclough,
1992;
see
also
van
Dijk,
1993)
3.
social
psychology,
specifically
the
work
by
Henri
Tajfel
(1981;
1982)
on
social
categories
(cf.
Sacks,
1992),
and
4. poli;cal
science,
specifically
the
work
by
Quen;n
Skinner
(2006)
on
changing
poli;cal
rhetoric.

5. ConcIusions
I
From
hacker
ethic
and
bazaar
governance
to
more
professionally
and
strategically
regulated
community
• Empirical
chapter
1.
Open
code
and
open
dialogue
cons;tu;ve
to
the
success
of
volunteer-­‐
firm-­‐collabora;on
-­‐>
also
“openness”
has
boundaries
• Empirical
chapter
2.
Volunteers’
changing
paferns
of
mo;va;ons
:
“independent
entrepreneurs”
with
mobile
membership
in
search
of
collabora;ve
community
–
dis;nc;on
between
work
and
hobby
blurred
and
changing
-­‐>
the
concept
of
“volunteer”
ques;onable
• Empirical
chapter
3.
User
freedom
or
user
control?
IT
staff
as
the
“obligatory
passage
point”
in
the
dissemina;on
of
open
source
to
end-­‐user
organiza;ons
-­‐>
also
open
source
can
be
used
for
control
purposes
• Empirical
chapter
4.
“Community”
-­‐
a
powerful
word
and
strategic
tool
for
orien;ng
towards
mul;ple
real
and
imagined
audiences
-­‐>
open
source
communi;es
are
managed
through
the
prac;ce
of
authoring

6. ConcIusions
II
New
developer
&
user
categories
in
OSS
-­‐
new
innova;on
intermediaries
From
user-­‐developers
and
the
core-­‐periphery
dis;nc;on
to
:
1)
idea-­‐genera;ng
users
2)
independent
plug-­‐in
and
extension
tool
providers
3)
typical
(end)
users
4)
ideological
researcher-­‐users
5)
media;ng
IT
staff
6)
media;ng
management
• open
development
not
collabora;ve
from
the
start!
• return
to
the
developer-­‐user
paradox…?
• Lead-­‐users?

7. Methodological
and
theore;cal
contribu;on
•
Discursive-­‐ac;on
community
as
a
specific
type
of
online
engagement
• Community
authorship
as
a
way
of
highligh;ng
power
rela;ons
in
communi;es
• Runaway
community
characteris;c
of
online
open
source
development