分布式开源社群治理机制研究综述

作为一种新兴的生产方式,开源软件的特点是志愿者为软件开发做出贡献而不追求任何个人的经济回报。这一现象引起了经济、法律、社会、心理以及计算机科学等领域的学者们的持续关注。但已有文献主要集中在分析参与者的动机上,因而忽视了对开源社群组织和制度结构的研究。事实上,开源软件奉行的是一种分布式的治理机制,即项目的创始人或者领导者让渡部分权责给他所信任的子系统负责人以建立核心层,在没有等级制度的情况下实现对整个社群的控制和协调。

Literature Review on Governance of F/OSS Communities of Distributed Mode

Free and Open Source Software is an emerging production mode,with which many volunteers contribute to development of computer software without expecting to receive any individual rewards at all.This phenomenon has raised continuous concerns of scientists in economics,law,psychology,sociologist,and computer,etc.Nevertheless,the existing literatures mainly focus on explaining the motivation of participants,thereby neglecting the institutional and organizational aspects of F/OSS communities.This paper analyzes governance structure of F/OSS as a distributed regime where the one initiator or leader of F/OSS project distributes some rights and responsibilities to some trusted responsible person of subsystems to form a core.In this way,he can control and coordinate the whole community without hierarchy.