Open Design Principles User groups often form and operate independently of firms. Many groups, however, are open to participation by firms so long as firms support the general goals of the community and abide by the community’s rules, norms, and practices. (Shah, 2005)
refer to the third group, formed by the members of the ‘hacker culture’ – the real heavy contributors who drive and manage the process.
Openness is a very general philosophical position from which some individuals and organizations operate, often highlighted by a decision-making process recognizing communal management by distributed stakeholders (users/producers/contributors), rather than a centralized authority (owners, experts, boards of directors, etc.) (van Abel et al., 2010).
“I haven’t seen any post saying: why aren’t we getting paid for what we are doing?“ (Coloplast, 2012, Appendix IV)
From a social perspective, openness is a core characteristic of an infrastructure that conveys and reinforces sharing, reciprocity, collaboration, tolerance, equity, justice and freedom. (van Abel et al., 2010). Openness pertains to accessibility and is a relative characteristic that refers to the degree to which something is accessible to view, modify and use. The ability to view refers to sharing content and the availability of detailed information about the subject matter. The ability to modify refers to sharing labour and empowering changes, improvements and extensions of subject matter. The ability to use refers to sharing ownership and enabling semi or unrestricted reuse of the subject matter or parts thereof. These are the three fundamental operations that are implied by accessibility (van Abel et al., 2010).
Why do they participate? Why do they work for free?
There are many motivational factors that can be mentioned in relation to open source contribution. Bonaccorsi & Rossi discuss several of these. They mention intrinsic utility similar to that of a scientific discovery, involving elements other than financial remuneration (Perking, 1999, in Bonaccorsi & Rossi, 2003). Sharing results enables improvement through feedback from peers and to gain recognition and hence prestige for their work. Secondly they mention the intellectual work being regarded as an art form – having an artistic satisfaction associated to solving complex challenges. Thirdly it is the pleasure of creativity, which is being progressively lost in the commercial world, where the nightmare of delivery deadlines is transforming production into an assembly line. As a final note they mention the business side of it, addressing customer satisfaction of filling an unfilled market, of specific products or services that contributors have looked in vain for (Bonaroccorsi & Rossi, 2003).
Who are the participants? A common question in relation to open source activities relates to Glass’s (1999, p. 104 in Bonaccorsi & Rossi, 2003) considerations on “who these crazy people are who want to write, read and even revise all that code without being paid anything for it at all”. Bonaccorsi & Rossi (2003) explain three types of participants. First of all, there is a large group of individuals who will never contribute to the development but may be capable of using the platform, but only if it is decidedly user-friendly. Second, those who contribute in their spare time and consider the development as a hobby. Their contribution is inevitably limited and clearly insufficient to explain the enormous results achieved by the open source movement. To do so, it is necessary to
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“I don’t consider myself as a hard working person. I have managed to combine my hobby with my work” (Copenhagen Suborbitals, 2012, Appendix VI)