The Rhetoric of Free: Open Source Software and Technical Communication During Economic Downturns

Zoetewey, Meredith W.

doi:10.1080/10572252.2013.794090

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Several studies on the relationships between corporations and open source communities have focused on efforts to restrict access to proprietary software or technology, and their effects on the agency of individual programmers or users (Gillespie, 2006; Qiu, 2017; Santoso and Wicker, 2016). There is also another line of research that frames the process of working with open source communities as beneficial to business, and which offers suggestions for how to build open source processes and engagement with open source communities into functional and profitable models (Dahlander and Magnusson, 2005, 2008; Fitzgerald, 2006; Zoetewey, 2013).…”

Section: The Open Source Ethosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Share and share unlike: Reciprocity, corporate power, and the open source ethos

Vasudevan

2021

New Media & Society

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The “open source” model initially emerged as a way for programmers to collaborate on efforts to build and share code, but has since evolved to embody an ethos of sharing and cooperation that pervades software development as a whole. As many technologists have seen, however, a philosophy of openness can leave them vulnerable to attempts by large corporations to use the norms of open source communities for their own benefits. This article examines the breach of social trust that occurs when companies do not fulfill expectations of reciprocity in their relationships with open source communities, and instead attempt to co-opt their work for monetary gain. Through analysis of three case studies, I seek to emphasize the often misleading nature of these processes and show that they are directly incorporated into the business models of large corporations, even if they are not openly acknowledged as such.

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