Les usages épistémiques des réseaux de communication électronique : Le cas de l’Open-Source

The concept of “distributed cognition” is applied to analyzing communication networks on Internet in order to better understand the role of electronic communications in acquiring and producing knowledge. This case study has as its basis a mailing list to the users of the free software “Debian.user.french”. The communication networks that emerged out of discussions on “threads” determined how knowledge was distributed among persons on the list. The structure of these threads limits the transmission of knowledge and gives rise to two types of epistemic networks: advice networks and discussion networks. Electronic communication networks facilitate the coexistence of these two types in a single community. Procedures that lead to a discussion of advices serve to select informants with a reputation and to develop cooperative structures out of the relationships formed while giving advice. This coexistence of various epistemic uses characterizes open-source communities, since it combines the cooperative production of a body of knowledge and the transmission of instructions to learners.