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Mediterranean Research on Free/Libre and Open Source Software
October 5th, 2006
In conjunction with MCIS 2006, The 7th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems
Invited talk
At the Boundary of CSCW, OS and STS
How to approach research questions emerging in the area of FLOSS?
Yuwei Lin
UK ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science, University of Manchester
The modularity of FLOSS and the way(s) it is produced provide a
stimulating and exciting space to discuss software development,
collaboration, and wider ICT issues within a multidisciplinary context.
The importance of multidisciplinary research in pursuing FLOSS studies
has been well-recognised in both academia and industry alike.
Publications in books or scientific journals are observed to offer
discussions from different disciplines and perspectives. At the Linux or
related open source conferences, social, legal and economic issues are
raised along with technical ones. The emergence of FLOSS studies allows
a variety of approaches, experiences and epistemologies to interact with
one another.
Although multidisciplinarity has been proposed to tackle the diversity,
hybridity and unavoidable complexity emerging in the FLOSS development,
most existing approaches remain static and linear, not capable enough
of capturing and analysing changing, emergent and dynamic processes of
technological development. Besides, multidisciplinarity also requires
researchers and practitioners to be more erudite and knowledgeable of
discussions in various disciplines. Such rising challenges also reflect
a wider concern in academia when facing the more and more competing and
complex world. Common questions include: How should academic react to
this call for multidisciplinary research? How should academic pursue
collaborative research? How can we engage and integrate different
theories and methodologies in various disciplines to conceptualise and
provide policy-oriented suggestions to FLOSS?
In this talk, I will firstly brief what current FLOSS studies have
achieved with the (conceptual and analytical) tools from social sciences
(economics, philosophy, sociology). Then, I will talk about the
challenges and new opportunities we social scientists face at the
moment, with a particular focus on practice-based CSCW, OS and STS. This
talk is anticipated to provide a comprehensive review of the
interdisciplinary approaches, to formulate theoretical assumptions, and
to design empirical studies.
Having said that, the challenge I would particularly like to address in
this talk is a methodological one. Current FLOSS studies from the many
social sciences perspectives have been mainly led by quantitatively
oriented research. Statistical data collected from large-scaled surveys
such as the EU FLOSS survey1 (Ghosh & Glott, 2002), the FLOSS-US survey2
(David et al. 2003), and the FLOSS-JP survey3 (Hiyane et al. 2004) has
proved to be important to our understanding of the FLOSS development.
Results from these surveys are quoted in scholarly papers, industrial or
governmental policy documents. And one of the most popular issues
explored in these surveys is mapping motivations of participating in the
FLOSS development.
In recent years, FLOSS becomes an intensely researched environment. A
lot of participants (particularly Debian Developers) are suffering from
survey-fatigue. ÒPeople no longer treat it as an honour to be asked
their opinion, but instead are more likely to see it as a nuisanceÓ. The
falling response rates have made doing an accountable qualitative survey
research more difficult.
Furthermore, like most quantitative research, although the survey data
helps to get an essential demography and frequencies of activities in
the FLOSS field, the epistemological and ontological assumptions behind
the design of the questionnaires contribute little to explain some
qualitative issues in the FLOSS field (e.g. interactions between users
and developers across communities, power relationships in communities,
dynamics in community-based decision making processes, changing
motivations, mobility and shifting identity, etc.). A major reason of
this is because survey questionnaires are heavily based on (and almost
unquestioningly re/presented by) a static and (or) dogmatic discourse
(e.g. on 'freedom' and on 'hacker culture') advocated mainly by a
homogeneous group of people (most of whom are male protagonists and
coders) in FLOSS. The data collected therefore only reflects a one-sided
explanation of the FLOSS phenomenon. The reliability of quantitative
data should be challenged because of such biased, stereotyped (but
widely accepted) proposition of the design of survey questionnaires.
Even if I consider continuing to conduct large-scaled surveys to be
crucial for the reason that accumulated longitudinal data would help get
a sense of socio-technical change in the FLOSS field, current
quantitative methods still cannot provide a more qualitative analysis of
dynamic and emergent processes stimulated by heterogeneity and inequality.
One might argue that there have already been plenty of researchers
conducting FLOSS studies using qualitative methods such as interview,
case study, and ethnographic observation. These qualitative studies to
some extent balance the situation mentioned earlier, and contribute to
our understanding of dynamics in FLOSS development processes. However, a
lot of them are still derived from the propositions informed by
monolithic discourses on voluntarism/gift culture or coding-oriented
expert-driven software production. And the interview acceptance rate
does not look more promising than questionnaire response rate.
Being aware of this, I argue that both qualitative and quantitative
research in current FLOSS studies require an epistemological and
ontological turn to adopt STS-inspired, practice-based, participatory
and reflective methodologies. The solution we need is no longer just
about adopting a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches
since both the numerical measurement and discursive explanation can be
dubious; both data collection processes can be time-consuming and
energy-demanding . This is no longer about which method is superior as
we usually fall into a qualitative-quantitative dichotomy. This, as I
will argue emphatically, is about a shift of methodological paradigm in
the ordering of fast technological innovation and sophisticated
communications between diverse actors and actants (artefacts) across
multiple cultural, organisational, and technical boundaries.
Whilst terabytes of data are generated through online human
communication, human-computer and machine-machine interactions (this is
parallel to what Savage and Burrows (2006) term 'transactional data'),
the pressing question is how can we utilise, analyse and make sense of
this huge amount of data without investing too many resources into data
collection. Facing the rapid mobilities and emergence in today's
techno-society (e.g. new technological innovation, quick
adoption/abandon of new/old technologies), how can we go beyond
traditional methods to achieve theoretical and methodological
breakthroughs?
I see an opportunity for FLOSS scholars to achieve this. The openness of
the FLOSS field has stimulated unprecedented complexity and dynamics
that require multidisciplinarity to comprehend. It is exactly these
extreme complexities and dynamics that motivate us to make the shift in
a more proactive way, to reposition ourselves as boundary knowledge
workers, rather than solely academic sociologists or economists. Doing
FLOSS studies is practising cross-boundary activities in both online and
offline environments. We interact with not only a variety of people
(interviewees, respondents, informants, fellow researchers), but also a
variety of technologies (FLOSS tools) and theories (in CSCW, OS and
STS). We need to educate ourselves with multiple arrays of discourses,
arguments and skills so as to make contact with diverse actors in this
field, to develop a sense of empathy towards different social and
technical practices, to be informed of emergent terms, technologies,
languages and groups. We need to reflect on what we have learned,
contemplating how our research practices and identities have been
altered, and turn/translate this into scholarly languages (no matter in
OS, STS, or CSCW etc.) that will in turn revolutionise existing
theories, and possibly the way(s) FLOSS is produced.
Autor's Bio
Yuwei Lin, Taiwanese, holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of
York. Her PhD research investigated the heterogeneity and contingency in
the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) social world, which is based
on a constellation of hacking practices, from the sociological
perspective. Her principal research interests centre on free/libre open
source software (FLOSS) studies, science and technology studies (STS),
digital culture and virtual communities, human computer interaction
(HCI), digital divide, and gender and ICT. Her research is mainly based
on qualitative research methodologies and methods including on-line and
off-line ethnographic observation, in-depth interview, and narrative
analysis. Yuwei works as Research Associate at the ESRC National Centre
for e-Social Science at the University of Manchester. Apart from her
academic career, Yuwei also actively participates in the practical world
of FLOSS. She covers Linux-related events for the Linux Magazine
http://www.linux-magazine.com,
and speaks at various Linux-related
conferences. For more information about Yuwei please visit her website
at http://www.ylin.org.
Additional information:
See the
PDF version of this abstract.
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