Free software development communities as a pedagogic model

The pedagogic interest arising from the emergence of free software development communities is twofold. Firstly, in their production practices these communities set out formative processes as well as educational ones. These practices characterise these communities and are not accessory, to the point that without them the communities could not survive. Secondly, these communities are interesting as they make up a particularly rich epistemological model for the understanding of formative, educational and didactical themes. Having embraced the hacker culture, these communities promote and create an incentive to the free circulation of knowledge without protectionist barriers. However, freedom of knowledge alone is not enough, both in the educational and productive fields, unless it is introduced in an organisational model promoting the participation and engagement of the individuals. The communities of free software development are a particularly interesting organisational model because their structure, based on co-operation and solidarity and opposing centralisation, promote the participation of programmers and users all over the world. Thanks to this kind of organisation, which owes much to a model of delegating leadership, authoritative but not authoritarian, charismatic but not idealised these communities are putting together a very large number of work groups. These are geographically, methodologically and culturally non-homogeneous groups, which despite all predictions create highly competitive products of high quality.