The life cycle process of knowledge sharing in free software communities: Sharing profiles and motivations

• Date: 01 July 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1569
• Author: Mírian Oliveira,Andrea Raymundo Balle
• Published date: 01 July 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The life cycle process of knowledge sharing in free software

communities: Sharing profiles and motivations

Andrea Raymundo Balle |Mírian Oliveira

School of Business, PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Rio

Grande do Sul, Brazil

Correspondence

Andrea Raymundo Balle, School of Business,

PUCRS, Av. Ipiranga, 6681 Prédio 50, Porto

Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Email: arballe@gmail.com

Funding information

CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento

Científico e Tecnológico—Brazil); CAPES

(Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de

Nível Superior—Brazil)

Knowledge is an obtainable, renewable, dynamic, context‐dependent resource that

can be shared, and the knowledge sharing cycle has 2 processes: knowledge donation,

when a person voluntarily offers his/her intellectual capital to others, and knowledge

collection, when a person consults other people's intellectual capital. Knowledge can

be shared among individuals, groups, and organizations. A free software community

is a type of community of practice arranged around a specific free software, where

the knowledge shared is complex and the knowledge sharing processes have scarcely

been studied. This investigation aims to identify the profiles of knowledge sharing

processes in free software communities and examine how 6 motivations for sharing

knowledge in free software communities are associated with each of the clusters.

To accomplish this objective, a survey method was adopted, with 260 respondents

belonging to free software communities. Cluster analysis was used to interpret the

data. Four clusters were identified: Sporadic Sharer; Collector; Donator; and Constant

Sharer. With the exception of the Sporadic Sharer, all the clusters presented high

values of both collection and donation, including the Donators and Collectors. These

results confirm the view of free software communities as communities of practice and

highlight the importance of knowledge sharing in free software development cycle.

The results reveal the importance of the Constant Sharer profile, which has the

highest rates of donation and collection and is also the profile in which all the motiva-

tions appear with the highest values, indicating its key role in the functioning of free

software communities.

1|INTRODUCTION

The free software movement is the result of a technological trend that

arose to challenge and criticize the copyright laws, and which has come

to develop numerous variations regarding the nature of freedom in soft-

ware development and artistic expression (Chen, 2006; Sullivan, 2011).

Free software provides information justice, that is, a fair rearrangement

of the social goods derived from information technology (Chopra &

Dexter, 2011). Participants in the movement fight against proprietary

software by developing and distributing alternative software products

to those offered in closed source systems (Sullivan, 2011). Free soft-

ware developers are organized in communities (Elliott & Scacchi,

2008) and give their time and know‐how voluntarily to improve the

software to which they are dedicated (Demazière, Horn, & Zune, 2007).

Free software communities structure themselves around a partic-

ular software and ethical issues of freedom regarding that software

(Stallman, 2009). Although free software communities are often

referred to, very little data are available on them (Ghosh & Prakash,

2000), especially in relation to knowledge management (Sowe,

Stamelos, & Angelis, 2008). Free software communities are considered

an excellent context in which to investigate knowledge sharing

because they have large numbers of participants who interact with

each other, a collaborative environment, and are knowledge‐intensive

(Iskoujina & Roberts, 2015).

Knowledge sharing is one of the most important processes in

knowledge management (Kuo & Young, 2008), as it contributes to

the development of new products (McAdam, O'Hare and Moffett,

2008) and enhances performance (Husain & Husain, 2013) and

Received: 3 February 2017 Accepted: 23 April 2018

DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1569

Knowl Process Manag. 2018;25:143–152. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kpm 143