Collaboration Practices and Affordances in Free/Open Source Software Development

This chapter examines collaborative work practices, development processes, project and community dynamics, and other socio-technical relationships in free and open source software development (FOSSD). It also describes what kinds of collaboration affordances facilitate collaborative work in FOSSD projects. It reviews a set of empirical studies of FOSSD that articulate different levels of analysis. Finally, there is discussion of limitations and constraints in understanding what collaboration practices and affordances arise in FOSSD studies and how they work, and then to emerging opportunities for future FOSSD studies.