Understand the motivations open source developers from their participation

Abstract

A large part of the existing literature on Open Source projects identified the motivation
factors predicting the participation of members. However, these incentives do not ensure a
sustained participation level. Most of the members leave projects when their personal needs
are satisfied and, as a consequence, a lot of projects are aborted or abandoned before the
beta version software has been distributed Indeed, most of open source projects are aborted
or abandoned because failing into keeping enough active members. So, the initial aforementioned
research question worth to be reversed in order to apprehend how the participation
level influences the way OS projects members make sense of their own motivations.
The objective of this article is to use the enactivist approach and to consider that motivations
are not simple antecedents to actions but are shaped by actions as well (here the participation).
The quantitative analysis delivers the results of a survey administrated to participants
of business OS projects. The results reveal that reputation, reciprocity and
professional opportunities expected are the most influenced variables by the participation.
However, learning motivations and ideology toward OS beliefs and values are the less influenced
ones. This results counterbalance prior empirical researches which had observed
a strong predicting power of both variables on expected participation level of participants.
This is tends to show participation as making sense to motivations whom members have
practical indicators for their self-assessment.