Micro-Dynamics in the Open Source Software.The Case of Ubuntu Developers

INTRODUCTION Open Source software (OSS) is the name of those computer applications released under a particular type of license which requires the source code to be “open”: freely available to anyone interested in seeing and/or editing it. Economic and social sciences recently showed a growing interest in this peculiar field mainly driven by the need to explain the phenomenon which denies many aspects of traditional incentives and product development theories. The OSS presents peculiarities in the development process, in the personal characteristics and motivations of people involved and the dynamics driving the interactions between them. The OSS' development is based on voluntary contribution to the product from programmers organized in informal and virtual communities. The collaborative nature of such development has been considered an important organizational innovation. According to some authorities on OSS (Raymond 2000, Feller and Fitzgerald 2002), this unconventional development leads to the software being freely available, highly complex and of high quality. Internet made the work easier: programmers from all countries can meet online and join instantaneous communication. This has affected the size and the composition of communities; before “www” communities included only people of the same company or university. Part of the economic world may not be familiar with the topic, therefore an introduction to the field and the context in which the phenomenon develops is needed. We can find evidence of the OSS’s relevance in the software industry by looking at some of the successful Open Source 5