'Let the Source be with you!‘ - Practices of Sharing in Free and Open-Source Communities

Abstract

Free and Open-Source Software (F/OSS) Communities enjoy a long history of sharing. They share source code, knowledge, social approval, communal ties and a ‘hacker’ ethics of giving back and helping others. Empirical investigation into the F/OSS network exhibits five central practices of sharing: materializing intellectual capital (sharing code/economic capital), creating intellectual capital (knowledge sharing), seeding of culture (sharing social capital), relating and bonding (sharing symbolic capital), and signifying (sharing cultural capital). Through processes of sharing in, sharing out and sharing across core members, contributors, and the public, F/OSS communities circumvent the capitalist logic, and sustainably contribute to an open, global system of sharing common goods.