Discovering Ideologies of the Open Source Software Movement

TL;DR

This paper develops an empirical framework to understand the ideologies underlying the open source software movement by analyzing practitioner and stakeholder narratives, revealing key ideological categories and their implications.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, empirically grounded framework of OSS ideology based on qualitative analysis of practitioner data and public narratives.

Findings

Identified six key categories of OSS ideology: membership, norms/values, goals, activities, resources, and positions/group relations.

Provided insights into how OSS ideologies influence community practices and social movement dynamics.

Enhanced understanding of OSS social and normative structures through empirical analysis.

Abstract

Encompassing a diverse population of developers, non-technical users, and other stakeholders, open source software (OSS) development has expanded to broader social movements from the initial product development aims. Ideology, as a coherent system of ideas, offers value commitments and normative implications for any social movement, so do OSS ideologies for the open source movement. However, SE literature on OSS ideology is often fragmented or lacks empirical evidence. We thus developed a comprehensive empirical framework of OSS ideology. Following a grounded theory procedure, we collected and analyzed data from 22 OSS practitioners and 41 video recordings of Open Source Initiative (OSI) board members' public narratives. A framework of OSS ideology emerged with six key categories: membership, norms/values, goals, activities, resources, and positions/group relations; each consists of several themes. With this ideological lens, we discussed the implications and insights into the research and practice of open source.