Book part:
The Invisible Coat-tail. Successful Collaboration in Open-Source Communities

dc.contributor.editorHug, Theo
dc.contributor.editorMaier, Ronald
dc.creatorHemetsberger, Andrea
dc.creatorReinhardt, Christian
dc.date.accessioned2023-08-22T12:49:00Z
dc.date.available2023-08-22T12:49:00Z
dc.date.issued2010
dc.description.abstractOnline collaboration is often organized without strong predetermined rules or central authority, which is why coordination and ways of organizing cooperation become crucial elements of collaboration. This article investigates how online projects can overcome problems of dispersed work, solve inherent contradictions, and utilize tensions in the activity system to develop collaborative artifacts and practices. To this end, we introduce cultural-historical activity theory as our theoretical framework. We introduce the notion of ‘coat-tailing’ – a term used to denote the parallel pursuit of individual and collective objectives – as a successful mechanism for online coordination and cooperation in co-configurative (Engeström 2004) online projects. Empirical evidence is based on a detailed observation of a successful open-source project – the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Our findings show that work tools and rules are designed to match individual expectations and to enable individual activity, where the collective activity is achieved by ‘piggybacking’ on the fulfilment of the individual task. In other words, coat-tailing systems enable ‘doing just one thing together’.en
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19823
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/21035
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherInnsbruck University Press
dc.publisher.placeInnsbruck
dc.relation.isPartOfisbn:978-3-902719-65-2
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttps://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
dc.subjectOnline collaborationen
dc.subjectcoat-tailing systemsen
dc.subjectonline projectsen
dc.subject.ddcddc:300
dc.titleThe Invisible Coat-tail. Successful Collaboration in Open-Source Communitiesen
dc.typebookPart
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeBookParten
local.coverpage2023-08-22T15:15:10
local.source.booktitleMedien – Wissen – Bildung. Explorationen visualisierter und kollaborativer Wissensräume
local.source.epage176
local.source.spage165

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