In addition to the good suggestions of others, you might find these review articles useful: Scacchi, W. (2007). Free and open source software development: Recent research results and methods. In Zelkowitz, M., editor, Advances in Computers, volume 69, pages 243–295. Elsevier Press. Crowston, K., Wei, K., Howison, J. and Wiggins, A. (2008). Free/Libre Open Source Software: What we know and what we do not know. Under Review. http://floss.syr.edu/StudyP/floss%20review%20paper.pdf They both focus primarily on the empirical, as opposed to conceptual, research about FLOSS development and implementation. They are both a little out of date, given the rapid pace of publishing (and change) in this field. As to your two focus areas, there is some work on implementation of FLOSS in organizations and the like, but nothing very specific comes to mind about resistance to open source, as such. There was a potentially useful exchange on the F/OSS discuss list, which I copy below, though. I'd love to see more research on resistance to and failures of open source :) As for "how the community of developers/contributors maintains a collaborative environment" let me give an only half-joking answer: by not working together very much :) However you might also find an analysis of group maintenance behaviors, drawing on politeness theories, which our research group is still working on: Scialdone, Michael, Na Li, James Howison, Robert Heckman, and Kevin Crowston. (2008). Group Maintenance in Technology-Supported Distributed Teams. Best Paper Proceedings of the 2008 Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA: August 8-13, 2008. http://floss.syr.edu/publications/AOM08fullpaper.pdf hth, James ps. Your colleague may wish to join these two lists, which have many researchers of FLOSS on them, although the conversation is manageable sparse. The second is especially good for knowledge about publicly available datasets on FLOSS. http://opensource.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/community https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ossmole-discuss pps. Sorry if people received this twice, I think I originally sent it from a non-subscribed email address and it didn't show up, but the listserv software didn't let me know there was an error. I sent it again because it didn't show up in the archives. ppps. here's the copied discussion from the F/OSS community list, maybe read bottom up.

Hi Louis,

On the "more prosaic than Latour" side of things you might want to examine studies in the Information Systems literature, starting with the old standby, "Technology Acceptance Model" (TAM). That said you may find TAM specific literature to be too tightly confined to a rational actor model, concerned more with assessments of system characteristics (ease of use, usefulness etc) than the types of reasons you consider below. You may find the critiques of the TAM to be more useful in that regard. There was a special edition on where next for TAM recently. Journal of the Association for Information Studies, Vol 8, Issue 4 (2007):

http://jais.aisnet.org/articles/default.asp?vol=8&art=16

I suspect you will also find useful work in the tradition of considering organizational politics in technology acceptance. Perhaps start with Markus (1983) and work forward in the MIS literature (ISR, MISQ, JAIS etc). I know there have been a number of politics of ERP implementation studies more recently.

Markus, M L (1983) Power, Politics and MIS Implementation. COmmunications of the ACM. Volume 26, Issue 6. http://www.bus.ucf.edu/csaunders/ism7939/Power%20Politics%20CACM.pdf

Another starting point might be the diffusion of innovations literature (rogers et al), perhaps this special edition will be a useful starting point:

Database (ACM SIGMIS) Special issue on adoption, diffusion, and infusion of IT http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?id=506724&type=issue&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=...

Having said that you might also want to look in the marketing literature, where I'm sure this phenomenon is highly researched, outside IT artifacts and potentially at the individual level where you indicate you are concentrating.

Finally, you may find interesting historical considerations in the european tradition of political economy, particularly historical studies of Luddism.

Cheers, James

On 5 Oct 2008, at 5:30 PM, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:

...

Hi To clarify:

I am interested NOT in the Latour problematic of technological dissemination in the abstract but in the particular and personal problem of persuading fellow humans to adopt technology that affects them in a likely mysterious and possibly adverse way. Thus, Geertz, Foucault, those theorists are probably more relevant, but still likely to be too abstract. Looking at, say, the history of evolution's dissemination may be more to the point but only insofar as it focuses on what was gained or lost by particular individuals in their public acceptance or rejection of its claims.

ciao, Louis

On 2008-10-05, at 21:46 , Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:

...

I'm not sure my subject line is accurate. I'm interested in studies that examine the specific behavioural/human aspects of technological dissemination within any given population. My focus happens to be Foss, but it could actually be anything.

The problem: all of us have doubtless encountered human obstacles (so to speak) who resist clearly better technology and techniques for producing and distributing it. These people resist for generally rational but personal reasons: they will lose power, influence, their job if they acquiesce to the new order. You can't really fault them and working with them is the generally the best solution. But what studies are out there that examine this general phenomenon, that could be characterized as, "Resisting the New"? Again, Foss is my focus but it could be anything, or perhaps anything sufficiently disruptive to a large enough group. I'd suspect that anthropology has examined this best but I'd not be surprised if behavioural economics has also taken on the issue. If not, it's a fine subject :-) One need only choose a particular technology, practice, issue.

Thanks louis

-- Louis Suarez-Potts, PhD Community Manager, Sun Microsystems, Inc. OpenOffice.org

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On 30 Oct 2008, at 6:56 PM, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

it's only somewhat current but: http://opensource.mit.edu/

On Oct 30, 2008, at 6:47 PM, Angela Adkins wrote:

...

Hello all,

I have been asked for literature suggestions by a colleague with a budding interest in research on open source, particularly in how the community of developers/contributors maintains a collaborative environment and in resistance to open source. I would like to help him but alas, I am not overly familiar with specific research on that topic. But I am always impressed at the helpfulness and willingness to share on this list, so I thought this would be a good place to ask. Does anyone have suggestions for good sources to get started? I would gladly pass them along--anything would be much appreciated

Thank you!

-- Angela Adkins Department of Sociology The University of Akron Akron, OH 44325-1905 Ph: (330) 234-1499 Email: ama13@uakron.edu

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