How Free Software Developers Work

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,

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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.