Developer autonomy in the FreeBSD open source project

Niels Jørgensen ()

Journal of Management & Governance, 2007, vol. 11, issue 2, 119-128

Abstract: Delegation of authority is the basic approach to coordination of work in FreeBSD, an open source software (OSS) project that develops and maintains an operating system. This essay combines a software engineering perspective with a knowledge creation perspective to discuss three central mechanisms in FreeBSD: (1) motivation, (2) quality control by frequent building, and (3) bugfixing by parallel debugging. It is argued that frequent building is the project’s key coordinating mechanism, and that build breakdowns play a constructive role in the processes of knowledge creation in FreeBSD. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Keywords: Frequent building; Knowledge creation; Open source; Quality assurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1007/s10997-007-9026-5

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