Intrinsic motivation in open source software development

Jürgen Bitzer, Wolfram Schrettl and Philipp Schröder

No 2004/19, Discussion Papers from Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics

Abstract: This papers sheds light on the puzzling evidence that even though open source software (OSS) is a public good, it is developed for free by highly qualified, young and motivated individuals, and evolves at a rapid pace. We show that once OSS development is understood as the private provision of a public good, these features emerge quite naturally. We adapt a dynamic private-provision-of-public-goods model to reflect key aspects of the OSS phenomenon. In particular, instead of relying on extrinsic motives for programmers (e.g. signaling) the present model is driven by intrinsic motives of OSS programmers, such as user-programmers, play value or homo ludens payoff, and gift culture benefits. Such intrinsic motives feature extensively in the wider OSS literature and contribute new insights to the economic analysis.

Keywords: open source software; public goods; homo ludens; war of attrition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 L31 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/49926/1/668836490.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Intrinsic motivation in open source software development (2007)
Working Paper: Intrinsic Motivation in Open Source Software Development (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:200419

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().