Free/Libre Open Source Software Development in Developing and Developed Countries: An Exploratory Study

Free/Libre Open Source Software Development inDeveloping and Developed Countries: An Exploratory Study

Ramanath Subramanyam Mu XiaUniversity of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign, College

of BusinessUniversity of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign, College

of Business

Abstract

How do participants in free/libre open source software (henceforth FL/OSS) development indifferent countries differ in the preference for such public good initiatives? How do theirincentives to participate in FL/OSS development differ across global boundaries? Thisexploratory study performs a comparative analysis of generic motivations and project−levelpreferences of FL/OSS participation across North American, Chinese and Indiandevelopment communities. We find that while intrinsic motives such as sharing and learningare present in all three regions, they are stronger for North America programmers than theirChinese and Indian counterparts. Extrinsic motives such as financial benefits are morepronounced in China and India than NA. In project−level preferences, Indian programmersare more drawn to modular projects than their NA or Chinese peers. Finally, genericmotivations are found to be related to project−level preferences for developing countryprogrammers, while the link is insignificant for NA programmers. We also show theimplications of these findings for government policies, especially those of developingcountries.

Both authors contributed equally. We thank UIUC CIBER for their support for the project, all the seminar participants atUniversity of Illinois and Georgia Institute of Technology for their comments. We particularly thank Cynthia Beath for herdetailed and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We are also grateful for Kexin “Katherine” Zhao andWoo−je Cho for their excellent research assistance.Published: 2006URL: http://www.business.uiuc.edu/Working_Papers/papers/06−0110.pdf

Free/Libre Open Source Software Development inDeveloping and Developed Countries: An Exploratory Study

Ramanath Subramanyam Mu XiaUniversity of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign, College

of BusinessUniversity of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign, College

of Business

Abstract

How do participants in free/libre open source software (henceforth FL/OSS) development indifferent countries differ in the preference for such public good initiatives? How do theirincentives to participate in FL/OSS development differ across global boundaries? Thisexploratory study performs a comparative analysis of generic motivations and project−levelpreferences of FL/OSS participation across North American, Chinese and Indiandevelopment communities. We find that while intrinsic motives such as sharing and learningare present in all three regions, they are stronger for North America programmers than theirChinese and Indian counterparts. Extrinsic motives such as financial benefits are morepronounced in China and India than NA. In project−level preferences, Indian programmersare more drawn to modular projects than their NA or Chinese peers. Finally, genericmotivations are found to be related to project−level preferences for developing countryprogrammers, while the link is insignificant for NA programmers. We also show theimplications of these findings for government policies, especially those of developingcountries.

Both authors contributed equally. We thank UIUC CIBER for their support for the project, all the seminar participants atUniversity of Illinois and Georgia Institute of Technology for their comments. We particularly thank Cynthia Beath for herdetailed and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We are also grateful for Kexin “Katherine” Zhao andWoo−je Cho for their excellent research assistance.Published: 2006Entered: August 9, 2006.

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Free/Libre Open Source Software Development in Developing and Developed

Countries: An Exploratory Study

Ramanath Subramanyam 1 ([email protected]) Mu Xia ([email protected])

Department of Business Administration, College of Business

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL 61820

Abstract

How do participants in free/libre open source software (henceforth FL/OSS) development

in different countries differ in the preference for such public good initiatives? How do their

incentives to participate in FL/OSS development differ across global boundaries? This

exploratory study performs a comparative analysis of generic motivations and project-level

preferences of FL/OSS participation across North American, Chinese and Indian development

communities. We find that while intrinsic motives such as sharing and learning are present in all

three regions, they are stronger for North America programmers than their Chinese and Indian

counterparts. Extrinsic motives such as financial benefits are more pronounced in China and

India than NA. In project-level preferences, Indian programmers are more drawn to modular

projects than their NA or Chinese peers. Finally, generic motivations are found to be related to

project-level preferences for developing country programmers, while the link is insignificant for

NA programmers. We also show the implications of these findings for government policies,

especially those of developing countries.

Keywords: Open Source Software, Cultural differences, Software development, Developer

motivations 1 Both authors contributed equally. We thank UIUC CIBER for their support for the project, all the seminar participants at University of Illinois and Georgia Institute of Technology for their comments. We particularly thank Cynthia Beath for her detailed and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We are also grateful for Kexin “Katherine” Zhao and Woo-je Cho for their excellent research assistance.

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1. Introduction

FL/OSS (Free Libre/ Open Source Software) refers to software programs that are

distributed with its source code, often under a license that sets conditions for modification, reuse

and re-distribution. As a new approach to develop software, the FL/OSS movement has seen

dramatic growth globally both in programmer participation and market share. It is reported that

worldwide there are about one million programmers [27] working on more than 100,000 FL/OSS

products, many of which are developed by voluntary programmers [14]. In a 2005 CIO Insight

Survey [7], 77% of CIOs and 88% of other IT executives in 233 companies have deployed or are

considering deploying open source systems, software or tools.

While so far most FL/OSS practitioners reside in developed countries, support of FL/OSS

from developing countries has surged recently. Many governments, e.g. China [24, 25], India

[26], Brazil [18], have set up programs and regulations to encourage the growth of FL/OSS

through distribution of FL/OSS software, education, government procurement preferences and

tax benefits for FL/OSS software firms. However, it is not clear how these tactics can induce

more participation in developing countries and if anything else can be done to encourage

developers to contribute to FL/OSS projects. This is a crucial issue for the viability of FL/OSS,

as developing countries have an increasing supply of programmers and have already

outnumbered those from the western world.2 If FL/OSS cannot engage the vast number of

programmers from developing countries and can only count on contribution from western

programmers, the needs of customers in developing countries, as the fastest growing software

2 For example, in India, the software industry employs more than 250,000 employees, sustaining annual growth rates of 30 to 40 percent in revenues and employment over more than ten years. Also, the number of IT graduates in India increased from 42,800 in 1997 to 71,000 in 2001. By comparison, the number of IT graduates in the United States increased from 37,000 in 1998 to 52,900 in 2000 [1].

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market, may not be addressed and consequently FL/OSS may stagnate and participation may

eventually decline.

Extant research in FL/OSS is mostly done in the western cultural context. For example,

most case studies and empirical research generally focus on mature English-speaking FL/OSS

communities. It is implicit that most of the programmers in the population studied live in

developed countries, and as such, the results cannot readily be generalized to programmers from

developing countries. This is especially true considering the fact that contribution by

programmers to FL/OSS is based on many motivations, e.g. user needs [30, 21, 22, 33],

recreational value [23], reputation [31] and reciprocity [33], many of which are dependent on the

cultural and economic context that may change significantly in developing countries. Extant

research suggests that consumer preferences in different cultural contexts do differ [19]. One

should expect so do the motives, which implies that user needs could also differ across cultures.

Besides motivations, project selection in FL/OSS is also of concern to us. From an

organizational perspective, the primary unit of FL/OSS is a project. Unlike in traditional settings

where firm-level, project-level, and individual-level factors are all important [8], FL/OSS

development can only be analyzed at the project and individual levels, since FL/OSS typically

does not rely on industry forces and firm-level inputs. Hence, it is crucial to understand project

preferences and individual preferences, as well as the relationship between these two factors.

Further, unlike proprietary software production, in FL/OSS participation is purely voluntary and

project selection is a personal choice of the programmer. In aggregate, programmers’ choices

determine which FL/OSS projects get developed, whereas the need to understand programmer’s

choice is minimal in proprietary production as development is rarely the programmers’ personal

decision. Yet, there seemed to be little understanding of programmers’ project preferences,

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especially how they are affected by their motivations to participate. Understanding this project

choice, in the long run, should help to predict the kinds of projects that are likely to be successful

open source initiatives. In this study, we explore motives for why a given participant chooses one

project over another, and how a participant’s generic open source motivations might be tied to

their project preferences. Knowing the answer to these questions will help us better understand,

for example, the kinds of initiatives that would be more likely to get attention from different

regional open source communities, and therefore more visibility, support and inputs from skilled

enthusiasts. The fact that these project preferences could drastically vary from one culture to

another also requires that we study this issue in a multi-cultural context.

This paper aims to compare programmers’ motivations to participate and their project

preferences in two settings: developed and developing countries. Specifically, we chose North

America (NA) to represent developed countries and China and India for developing countries.

Our choice is motivated by their significant roles in the history and current development of

FL/OSS and today’s software marketplace. First, we use NA in a loose sense to represent the

western world, where the idea of FL/OSS originated and it is still where most of the activities

have taken place. We selected India based on its leading position in the global software and

business process outsourcing market and the vast number of software developers [34]. China,

with its recent enormous economic growth and a fast-developing domestic software market,

offers another natural candidate for the study. The two developing countries, due to their sheer

size, have relatively large and independent software developer communities from the western

world, which provide nice contrasts to the western community. These three regions also differ

significantly in several cultural dimensions that are relevant to FL/OSS such as individualism,

collectivism [15].

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We first investigate how three generic motivations — intrinsic (sharing and learning),

extrinsic (financial incentives) and internalized extrinsic (user needs) — affect programmers’

decision to participate in FL/OSS development. Project-level choices of programmers and their

relationships to the generic motivations are also examined across the three regions.

Our findings indicate the presence of intrinsic motives in the three regions, with NA

participants exhibiting stronger extents of intrinsic motives. Extrinsic concerns are found to be

more important to Chinese and Indian participants in comparison to NA FL/OSS participants.

The samples varied considerably in their motivation due to functional needs. Our results also

suggest that project-level choices differed across the three samples. We observed Indian

participants being drawn towards FL/OSS projects that were designed in a modular manner

while participants in China gravitated towards large projects with numerous contributing

members. Both Chinese and Indian participant pools exhibited heterogeneity in their preference

for universal FL/OSS initiatives while their NA peers were relatively homogeneous in this

dimension. Finally, we observe that generic motivational factors were related to project-level

choices. Chinese participants driven by intrinsic motives were drawn towards large scale,

universal projects that employed sophisticated development techniques and modular design

principles. In contrast, Indian participants who exhibited similar project preferences were

inherently motivated by extrinsic intentions.

We believe that understanding these results is important for making policy decisions

related to FL/OSS, especially in developing economies such as India and China. For example,

promoting FL/OSS education will benefit programmers by helping them obtain design and

programming skills by participating in development, since sharing and learning is an important

motivational factor for them. In addition, we expect economic policies in developing countries

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favoring FL/OSS-related businesses, now a common tactic as mentioned earlier, to have a

positive impact in programmer participation. Moreover, the governments’ investments in

FL/OSS are justified, not only from the commonly understood cost and security factors, but also

from the software industry growth perspective—as FL/OSS can be used as a means to provide

exposure to systematic, collaborative software development, an experience that is hard to obtain

except for those working for multinational software companies. This is also evidenced by the

finding that developing country programmers who are drawn to FL/OSS by both extrinsic and

intrinsic motivations also prefer working in large, modular and universal projects, the same

characteristics of projects developed in multinational software companies. Programmers in

developed countries differ, where we observe no particular relationship between the two sets of

motivational factors.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we introduce the background

information and literature review. Section 3 presents details of the data collection process and the

empirical model. We discuss the findings of our model in Section 4. Section 5 provides some

implications of our results and concludes our paper.

2 Background and Literature Review

2.1 Cross-cultural Research Relevant to FL/OSS

Given that FL/OSS is a wide-spread global phenomenon, research in this area could

benefit from a cross-cultural perspective. Yet despite the proliferation of FL/OSS research, to the

best of our knowledge, most research projects have been conducted in the context of open source

communities in western cultures. For instance, a number of empirical studies have targeted

programmers participating in open source community sites such as SourceForge.net or projects

such as Apache, where programmers often share western values (e.g. [13, 22, 33]). However, it is

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not known whether and how the findings from these papers apply to new “territories” of open

source, such as China and India. It is likely that the diverse environments present different issues

and opportunities, thus motivations of participation would differ in developing countries. One

primary reason that may explain the possible differences is cultural dissimilarity. Hofstede (1980)

develops a cross-cultural analysis framework that distinguishes countries in several dimensions.

The scores of the three regions of interest to us are shown in Table 1.

<Insert Table 1 here.>

From this table, it is evident that the level of individualism is very high in North America,

in contrast to China and India. This suggests that FL/OSS, which is based on individual

voluntary contribution, may face different participation issues in developing countries such as

China and India as opposed to NA. Likewise, the power distance measure, which has

implications for participation in open source software development for financial reasons,

suggests significant differences between NA, China and India. It is likely that such differences

could result in differences in motivational factors (both generic factors as well as project-level

choices) across different countries.

The next two subsections review literature on generic motivational factors and project-

level preferences of FL/OSS participants.

2.2 Generic Motivational Factors: A Taxonomy

Participant motivation, as mentioned before, is the primary focal point of a large body of

FL/OSS research. Researchers ask: Why do programmers contribute to open source projects,

when there is no direct monetary reward, given the extent of decentralization involved in open

source? Extensive research has been done (e.g. [30, 13, 23, 22, 32, 33]) to study contribution

incentives that drive open source participation. In general, the motivations can be categorized as

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either extrinsic i.e. those that offer direct or delayed monetary rewards in mediated forms, or

intrinsic, i.e. those that are pursued for their own sake. In addition to extrinsic and intrinsic

motivations, Roberts et al. [31] introduce the notion of “internalized extrinsic motivations”. They

argue that solving a problem of personal interest (satisfying user needs) or contributing for

reputation and career concerns belong to this category as they have to be internalized due to their

self-regulating nature.

In this research, we follow this categorization and adopt three main generic motivational

factors. First is sharing and learning, which is the most widely cited intrinsic motivation. Second

we consider financial and career benefits that developers derive from participating in FL/OSS

development, as it is the most recognized extrinsic motivation. We also study user needs,

considered by prior researchers (e.g. [31]) as an important internalized extrinsic motivational

factor. Note that often more than one motivation is recognized as important in several prior

studies. For example, Roberts et al. [31] surveyed participants of three Apache projects and find

that internalized extrinsic, intrinsic and extrinsic are all deemed significant motivational factors.

A summary of findings from prior research on these constructs is shown in Table 2. We will

further elaborate on the motivations in the following subsections.

<Insert Table 2 here.>

2.2.1 Intrinsic Motivation: Sharing and Learning

Among all the incentives for participation in FL/OSS, the intrinsic incentives are

probably the most documented, since these are unique to FL/OSS compared to proprietary

software development. For example, the entire FL/OSS development process provides an

opportunity for the experienced programmers who want to share their knowledge as well as their

inexperienced counterparts who join the community to learn. In other words, it is intuitive that

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participation in a highly interactive and skilled product development community should allow

novices and even experts to gain marketable design and programming skills (e.g. [4]).

Researchers do find that participants of open source place a high premium on the sharing and

learning effect of participating in open source [33]. Complementary to such learning effects,

Shah [33] also finds that community norms of reciprocity and need-driven learning often

motivate participants of some open source communities. For instance, she reports that some

participants may contribute in order to elicit solution improvements, initiate and sustain

discussions of their solutions, and to bring their solutions to the attention of others in the

community.

When studying a global phenomenon such as FL/OSS development across regional

boundaries, it is imperative that we bear in mind region-specific differences. For instance, from

Hofstede’s cultural score table (Table 1), we find that the extent of individualism is high in North

America compared to countries such as China or India. This suggests that the weight

programmers place on sharing and learning as a motivation factor might differ across these

regions. Further, infrastructural differences might also come into play. On the one hand, many

FL/OSS projects are global efforts, jointly developed by programmers residing in geographically

distant countries can effortlessly collaborate on a project. On the other hand, programmers from

developing countries who join global-level open source projects are affected by factors such as

poor Internet infrastructures and potential language barriers, the latter being especially important

in developing countries where English is not spoken as a major language.

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2.2.2 Extrinsic Motivation: Career Concern and Financial Benefits

In the literature, researchers also note that even though there is no direct financial reward

for programmers working on an FL/OSS project, indirect financial incentives cannot be ignored.

Among them, career concerns and reputation effects are the most recognized.

There has been a growing debate over the potential career-concern implications arising

from open source participation, with some mixed findings. Since open source communities

provide the ability for participants to signal their capability through their work, employers can

observe such participation and reward skilled ones with higher-paying jobs. Investigating the

potential prevalence of such a phenomenon, Roberts et al. [31], in their study of the Apache

HTTP Server project, find that while greater open source participation per se, as measured in

contributions made, might not lead to wage increases, a higher status in a merit-based ranking

within the Apache Project does lead to significantly higher wages. This suggests the plausibility

of participation as a signaling mechanism to potential employers. On the other hand, Shah [33],

in her sample of open source code contributors, finds that the most developers did not foresee a

link between participation and better job prospects.

We believe that these findings could be complemented by unearthing region-specific

differences in career concern and financial motives. Specifically, we conjecture that career

concerns and financial incentives should be important drivers of participation in developing

economies such as India and China. At least three factors lead to our speculation. First, in

developing countries, despite the relative higher income levels of participants in software

development compared to other industries, it could be argued that, typical programmer income

should not afford the participants the freedom to work on tasks that do not provide direct

monetary compensation. Second, we believe that there is a noted absence of a geek culture in

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developing countries in comparison to developed ones. Unlike their counterparts in western

countries, a lot of whom grew up writing programs, the majority of programmers in some of

these countries are drawn to the field for its high income potential. Third, in many countries,

FL/OSS is promoted by the government as an alternative to proprietary software for factors such

as low cost, openness, better security, and limited explicit switching costs [11, 25]. The resulting

demand for FL/OSS programmers presents an additional benefit of gaining experience in this

field. In addition, the power distance measure (Table 1), which indicates presence of economic

and societal inequalities [15], is much higher in developing countries such as China and India in

comparison to North America. We expect that this difference might lead to stronger emphasis by

Chinese and Indian participants on the financial and career motivations.

2.2.3 Internalized Extrinsic Motivation: User Needs

It is well accepted that one of the major advantages of FL/OSS is the integral

involvement of the user in software creation and production (e.g. [23, 33]). Lerner and Tirole

[23], in their paper on programmers’ incentives to contribute to open source projects, draw

observations based on interviews of developers of four major FL/OSS projects. They identify

two sources of benefits for developers as users. First, many FL/OSS projects have been started

because the developers wanted to “scratch an itch”, i.e. write the software to accommodate their

own needs that are not satisfied by existing programs, as reported in Ghosh et al.’s [10] survey of

open source programmers. Such “lead users” have very strong motivations to innovate and are an

important source of product innovations for firms [36, 28]. Second, programmers receive direct

benefits as users when they fix a bug in the program or customize it to meet their own needs.

Neither of these benefits can be easily achieved in proprietary software development settings.

Other researchers also report empirical evidence of user needs as a source of motivation. For

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example, Lakhani and Wolf [22] survey participants of projects hosted by SourceForge.net, a

popular web-based repository of FL/OSS projects. They find that a majority (58%) of

programmers cite user needs as a motivator of contribution. These include personal needs (34%

of all respondents) and professional needs (30% of all respondents). Moreover, as observed by

Lakhani and von Hippel [21], user needs explain contribution to not only source code, but also

less glamorous tasks such as documentation and support, as users benefit from the opportunity to

learn through public posting of answers and questions.

One important aspect of user needs is that they are highly heterogeneous, which Bessen

[3] uses to explain the lack of opportunistic behavior among potential developers. Researchers

also consider heterogeneity in user valuations and abilities [16, 20] when studying the

competition between FL/OSS and proprietary software. For instance, Franke and von Hippel [9]

examine how heterogeneity in user demand drove the development of the Apache security

features.

Users and developers across countries vary greatly in their perception, needs and

valuations of FL/OSS, and their ability to contribute to open source development initiatives. In

most developing countries, where computing advances are relatively nascent and imported

software often dominates its local counterparts in its prevalence, such heterogeneities can be

more pronounced than in developed countries where numerous important FL/OSS initiatives

have often originated. To our knowledge, there is limited research on how user needs in different

countries affect the development of FL/OSS. An exception is Lakhani and Wolf’s study [22], on

SourceForge projects, that involves programmers in multiple countries; however, 83% of the

study respondents come from either North America or Western Europe. Hence, there is a limited

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understanding of progress in the FL/OSS movement in emerging software markets and

production bases, such as India and China.

2.3 Project Choices Preferences

Given the widespread growth of the open source movement and the great number of

project choices that participants have, it is important to know what kinds of project profiles

participants tend to gravitate towards. This choice, in the long run, should help predict the kinds

of projects that are likely to be successful open source initiatives. Yet, existing FL/OSS literature

has not studied programmers’ project-level preferences. We focus on three widely accepted

project-level characteristics that programmers are well aware of even before FL/OSS became

popular: modularity, larger team size and content universality.

2.3.1 Modularity

Prior research has argued that the modularity of a product should theoretically influence

programmers’ motivations to contribute in FL/OSS projects. For instance, Baldwin and Clark [2]

note that if a code base is modular, working developers should do better in a collective

environment than coding alone. This suggests that architectural modularity should have a

positive effect on developers’ incentive to participate in a community effort such as in open

source development. While some FL/OSS projects, e.g. Apache, are touted for their modularity

[23] and are the target of significant developer interest (e.g. [31]), there is limited empirical

research validating the programmer preferences for projects of higher modularity.

2.3.2 Large Teams

Projects developed by large teams have some inherent advantages and disadvantages.

Presumably, larger projects offer more opportunities to collaborate with and learn from peers

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sharing similar interests, while smaller projects present an opportunity for faster appreciation of

one’s work and limit the coordination challenges that are common in large teams (e.g. [6]). Do

such motivations hold across countries? With an increase in project size, increased coordination

and communication burdens (e.g. [6]) might outweigh the benefits of collaboration. The

advantage of contributing to a smaller project includes fewer coordination problems and the

potential of receiving faster appreciation for her/his contribution. Hence, it is important to

understand whether and how participants view the effect of project size. Again, this factor could

vary based on region-specific differences in motives. It could be argued that, for example, the

communication and management structure of projects in different regions might reflect local

customs and nuances which in turn should affect the motivations of contributing participants.

2.3.3 Universal vs. Local Projects

Programmers have the choice of working on projects of universal relevance or local

relevance. On the one hand, they can contribute to universal projects such as operating systems

initiatives and web servers. Alternatively, they can choose to work on local projects such as local

language dictionaries, or localization efforts related to a universally popular program. Note that

the term local content is not restricted in the language sense. It is defined as software written for

a geographically-congregated audience. For example, a software program to calculate taxes in a

particular region has to incorporate all the local tax codes could be considered as local in nature;

therefore it cannot be used elsewhere without significant modifications. On similar lines,

Krishnan and Subramanyam [19] find that users in different countries tend to significantly differ

in their preferences on functionalities for the same software product. Such differences in user

preferences, in conjunction with localization needs, may lead to different development priorities,

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both for proprietary and open source software. It is important to investigate whether open source

programmer priorities are affected by such context-specific user preferences.

2.4 Relationship between Generic Motivations and Project Choices

As mentioned in the introduction, it is important for researchers to understand the

relationship between generic motivations and project-level preferences for FL/OSS programmers,

as it will help to predict which projects will likely receive more interest if programmers’ generic

preferences are known. However, there is limited research linking the two sets of factors.

First, we expect that intrinsic motivational factors such as sharing and learning are likely

to be associated with project-level choices. Sharing and learning of project management and

design skills is best achieved in a project that uses modular design and management principles.

In other words, a participant who is driven by sharing and learning motives would ideally prefer

a modular project over a non-modular one, ceteris paribus. Likewise, learning opportunities are

best provided in projects that seek inputs from a larger community of programming experts.

Hence, we anticipate participants who are motivated by sharing and learning to gravitate toward

large projects. Further, global projects that draw participation from experts around the world

provide an ideal medium for learning opportunities and sharing design and programming

expertise. These factors suggest that sharing and learning is linked to project preferences.

Similarly, we expect significant relationships between financial incentives and project-

level preferences. Modularized projects provide a faster and more visible approach to gaining

more experience and reputation for a programmer, making him more valuable in the job

marketplace. Baldwin and Clark [2] argue that modularity in a product is the mechanism by

which the sourcing from the market (through vertical or horizontal means) is built into the design

of the product. They suggest that the presence of modularity leads to matched incentives for

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participants to contribute to the development of open source software and permits efficient

exploitation of talent by allowing different work tasks to be assigned to the most efficient

producer. In the same vein, larger projects are likely to provide greater opportunities for

participants to showcase their design and programming skills. Finally, we expect that universal

projects provide greater visibility and more opportunities for participants in seeking future

financial benefits, in comparison to local projects.

Based on a similar reasoning, we also anticipate differences in the relationships across the

three samples given the cultural and economic differences noted earlier. For instance, in NA

(where the individualism factor is high), it is likely that participants who are motivated by

intrinsic benefits of FL/OSS (sharing and learning), may be highly heterogeneous in the way

they select projects. While some participants may prefer to share their skills in a small project,

other participants may prefer to showcase their skills in (and learn from) medium-sized or large-

scale projects.

3 Data Collection

For this study, we interviewed and surveyed participants from three geographical regions

– North America, China and India. The participants were contributors to open source software in

three distinct collaboration forums. For NA, we interviewed and surveyed contributors from 50

most active projects in SourceForge during the year 2004. For China, we selected participants

from HuiHoo.org, one of the most active open source communities in China, during the same

year. Finally, for India, we surveyed contributors to active projects in 2004 on the Sarovar.org

open source collaboration forum. These three forums were chosen since they capture a

representative pool of participants from that geographic locale. We initially interviewed two

participants from the SourceForge community, six voluntary participants from Sarovar, and four

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voluntary participants from HuiHoo. An average of 90 minutes was spent on each interview to

elicit views on open source participation, as well as to confirm whether popular views from prior

literature were valid. In the next stage, we administered a survey with questions based on

theoretically-studied constructs and a few open questions that elicit the reasons for participation

of a particular contributor and their views about needs and priorities of the open source

community from their perspective.

During the initial phase of the survey process, the attributes of importance to the target

group were elicited from a pilot sample of participants. Using these elicited attributes, a short

survey with open and closed questions based on the selected attributes was administered to a

sample of participants from these three communities. The survey was maintained relatively short

to encourage full participation of the user in the survey. A translated version of the questionnaire

was administered to the Chinese participants. During the survey process, customers were given

consistent explanations of the meanings of the survey questions.

We gathered responses from about 40% of surveyed participants in the Indian community

(19 participants), about 20% from the Chinese forum (28 participants), and 5% of participants

from the North American surveyed pool (16 participants). We suspect that the difference in

response rates, especially the relative low response rate of North American participants, could be

attributed to the following several reasons. First, open source software has received much more

attention and support from the government in developing countries. The Chinese government, for

example, directly supports Red Flag Linux, a Chinese version of Linux and has joined Japan and

South Korea in developing Asianux, a new Linux system for Asian users [17]. Hence,

programmers in these communities are much more eager to know how open source development

is done in the developed countries than vice versa. Hence, they tended to be more cooperative

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than their western counterparts in volunteering inputs for our study. In contrast, participants of

SourceForge had received too many survey requests in the past few years, their interest in

participation had worn off considerably. This was brought to our attention by several respondents

who declined to participate in our study. Second, programmers in developing countries in

general were less hostile to unsolicited surveys that we sent them than programmers in developed

countries. In cases where the participants were not interested in filling out the survey, none of the

recipients from the Chinese and Indian communities was vocal about receiving it and against

participation. By contrast, we received quite a few complaining emails from the North American

community about the unsolicited nature of the survey request. Third, the relative short history of

open source software in China and India makes our survey more appealing to respondents in

these two countries than those in North America, who, due to the recent influx of surveys sent by

other open source researchers, were very sensitive to any new surveys. Finally, we suspect that

North American programmers employ stronger email filtering rules than their developing

country counterparts do, which lead to fewer deliveries of the survey. It is also interesting to note

that for those North American programmers that did respond, they gave very detailed comments.

3.1 Methodological Issues

Performing a cross-cultural analysis using survey-based data poses several challenges

that have to be explicitly addressed to ensure the validity of the results. Two such issues deserve

special consideration—translation equivalence between the different questionnaires and sample

equivalence between different cultures [35]. We ensured that the meaning of the survey

questionnaire was consistent after the survey was translated into the Chinese language by using a

bilingual translator well-versed in both languages. A research assistant’s help was also sought

out to ensure that coding of responses was done appropriately. Our confidence in the sample

19

equivalence is based on the following: 1) the primary means by which the participants of Open

Source community contribute and collaborate with others towards open source solutions is

through Internet communities such as SourceForge, Freshmeat, Sarovar, and Huihoo. Hence, the

sample of participants is relatively homogenous in the manner in which they contribute to the

project. 2) Most of these communities have a contribution-based leadership mechanism that

ensures that capable people spearhead the collaboration efforts of the participants. 3) In the three

cultural contexts, the participant in the survey is an active contributor to an active project. One

limitation of our approach is that we do not know the true contributions of these programmers.

Some contributors coded, some were involved in planning, while others made contributions over

prior-developed solutions. We next provide definitions of the variables used in our analyses and

discuss our results.

3.2 Variable Definitions

Generic motivational factors:

Participation in open source due to sharing and learning: This variable captures the

extent to which a participant is drawn towards open source projects due to her/his belief in

sharing work and learning from other participants. This is captured on a seven point Likert scale.

This is in line with Shah’s [33] observation that reciprocity and learning are among important

motivations of participation in some open source communities.

Participation in open source to provide oneself financial benefits: Obtained on a seven-

point Likert scale, this variable represents the extent to which an FL/OSS participant is drawn

towards projects that provide the participant with financial benefits. This measure is based on the

notion that programmers do have financial and career incentives when participating in FL/OSS

development, as observed by Lerner and Tirole [23].

20

Participation in open source to satisfy functional needs: Using a seven-point Likert scale,

this measure captures the extent to which a participant is drawn towards initiatives that address

needs not already met by commercially available alternatives. We averaged two items (reliability

score of α = 0.7) to create this score. This measure is consistent with prior research on user needs

as a motivational factor (e.g. [10]).

Project choice preferences:

Participation in modular projects: This variable was measured on a seven-point Likert

scale. It intends to capture the extent to which an open source participant is motivated to

participate in a project because it is designed and developed in a modular manner. This measure

is consistent with the modularity construct investigated by Baldwin and Clark [2].

Participation in projects with large teams: This seven-point Likert scale measure aims to

capture the extent to which a participant is likely to gravitate towards open source projects that

are developed in large teams. We substantiated this measure by querying the participant the size

of the most recent project that she/he participated in terms of number of modules. We found the

correlation between the two items to be 0.80.

Participation in universal projects: This variable was also measured on a seven-point

Likert scale. We created this score using two items on the survey (reliability α=0.84). This

variable intends to capture the extent to which an open source contributor is motivated to

participate in projects aimed at a universal audience. When this measure is low, participants

prefer projects targeted at local audience or locale-dependent functionality.

The control variable, participant experience in open source development, was captured

through a survey item indicating the years of experience of the participant in open source

software development.

21

The sample size for our analysis is 63. The 63 cases were selected from the set of 71

responses for our analysis. The other eight responses belonged to geographical regions not tested

in this analysis. The summary statistics for the variables in our study, including correlations, are

shown in Table 3.

<Insert Table 3 here>

4 Empirical Results and Discussion

We performed pair-wise comparison across the three samples using a non-parametric

approach. In small samples of data, it is possible that the results could be sensitive to

distributional assumptions. Hence, we adopt a non-parametric approach which is more robust to

outliers and influential observations. We performed population mean comparisons using the

Mann-Whitney rank-sum test. We find that in the three pair-wise analyses, the null hypothesis of

equal variance was not rejected. To verify whether the results are sensitive to distributional

assumptions, we performed ANOVA contrast tests that were consistent with the non-parametric

Mann-Whitney test results presented in Table 43. Finally, to test the relationships between the

generic motivational factors and project choice preferences, we perform Multivariate Analysis of

Variance (MANOVA) tests of relationships between the two sets of factors and report the results

in Table 5.

<Insert Table 4 here>

<Insert Table 5 here>

4.1 Intrinsic Motivation: Sharing and Learning

We performed dependent sample pair-wise t-tests to identify the most important one of

the generic motivational factors, we find that sharing and learning is the most important factor

3 We have not included the results of the ANOVA contrast tests due to space limitations

22

that draws participants into open source in all the three regions. This is followed by user needs

and financial benefits respectively. This ranking was consistent across the three samples though

the statistical significance of the difference between user needs and financial benefits was not

found in the China sample. This suggests that the three communities are strongly driven by the

desire to learn development and share their skills with other developers in the community.

In terms of comparisons across the regions (Table 4), we find that the sharing and

learning factor is significantly stronger in North America in comparison to China. With respect

to India, the difference is positive but not statistically significant. Between North America and

China, the difference could be due to several reasons. First, the degree of maturity of the

software market is the highest in North America. Hence, the level of sophistication and the

extent of choices available among proprietary and FL/OSS software is high in this region

compared to the other two regions. This implies that the participants bring their niche interests to

each initiative and understand the merits of FL/OSS relative to alternative approaches. For

instance, one NA participant when asked for his reason to participate in FL/OSS

responded …“There is more of a community donating code/ideas for the software so it soon

becomes a better product for the user and quicker than it would if developed using a proprietary

approach.” Likewise, participants were also particular about the nature of FL/OSS software

products that they intended to contribute in. For example, another participant in the NA

community stated…“I participate in projects that I want to use afterwards. And I prefer to stay

in the kind of projects for end-users, not targeted at administrators or such.” Another reason for

the difference between the regions is the extent of specialization and highly-specific learning

interests among the participants. Such a targeted interest was evident in some responses; one

participant expressed … “My personal interest is in the area of programming. I'm primarily

23

oriented towards compiling, emulation, and systems tools. I would not participate in any sort of

Office-related project.” Under such circumstances, it is plausible that sharing of specific

knowledge can be achieved better through a medium such as FL/OSS.

In contrast, participants in the Chinese community and the Indian community (to a lesser

extent) were often drawn towards the philosophy of FL/OSS and rarely expressed niche interests

in particular specialties. This aspect was evident from responses of some Chinese participants:

“… You can understand the entire framework by reading documents and codes, and you can

know how to apply some design methods and select them from many alternatives…”; “”.

Likewise, Indian participants expressed a general interest in the philosophy rather than a

specialized technical interest : “Programming is my form of art. It is to be peer reviewed and

appreciated as widely as possible. I don’t care much for which company I work for as long as I

get the opportunity for the above.”; similarly when asked for the reason for interest in FL/OSS

another experienced software developer responded“… (a) there is a community built around the

project. (b) it helps the project evolve at a much greater rate. (c) it is more fun working for an

open source initiative. (d) there is much more ego satisfaction.”

4.2 Extrinsic Motivation: Career Concern and Financial Benefits

We found considerable differences in the extents to which participants were driven by

financial benefits in the three regions. Hann et al. [12] find that career concerns is among the

least important (statistically significant) motivational factors in open source contributions. Our

results may complement these findings since they include developing country participants. We

find that participants from the Chinese community as well as the Indian community were

strongly driven by career concerns and financial benefits in comparison to North American

participants. This was evident from the statistical significance of this difference (Table 4). There

24

could be several reasons for these differences. For instance, from a cultural perspective, the

Power Distance index [15] is high in China and India compared to that in North America (Table

1). This suggests that the economic inequalities in the population are likely to be high in these

regions. Participants, hence, are likely to be drawn toward initiatives that raise their current and

future income potential. Another reason could be the direct financial benefits of participation in

FL/OSS. This was evident from views of a few Chinese participants on their motivation for

FL/OSS participation. For instance, one respondent noted…“…Salaries for FL/OSS

programmers are higher than, say, Windows developers. While some programmers find working

in FL/OSS more satisfying than commercial software, most do not have any preference…”

We also expect that, with less economic means, the programmers’ non-monetary

motivations may likely be weaker than their counterparts in developed countries. This effect is

made stronger by the fact that in countries such as India and China, programmers enjoy higher

income relative to other professions compared to those in developed countries4.

4.3 User Needs

We find that the variance of user needs measure is unequal across the NA-China and

China-India pairs of samples (in pair-wise Levene’s test shown in Table 4). Hence, we cannot

compare the means of the samples directly.

One reason for these differences could be that, in NA, typically there are several

commercial alternative software products for a given FL/OSS product (often there is always at

least one major commercialized/proprietary alternative for most FL/OSS products). However, in

4 According to a recent survey, the average annual salary for senior software engineers is 100,000 Yuan, while junior software engineers make 50,000 Yuan annually (Source: http://www.nit-pro.org/hydt.asp?NewsID=1671, in Chinese, last accessed and translated on April 6, 2006). The overall average income across all industries, however, is only 16,000 Yuan (Source: http://www.molss.gov.cn/tongji/gb/GB2004.htm, in Chinese, last accessed and translated on April 6, 2006). In the US, in contrast, the average wage of computer programmers is less than twice that of the national average across industries (Hourly wage of $31.69 in comparison to average of $17.60: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151021.htm, last accessed on Apr 6, 2006)

25

countries such as China, this is not the case. We find that projects in these communities often

may not compete with proprietary alternatives. Hence, while some participants are strongly

driven by the need for a product (given the lack of alternatives in the market place), others

participants are motivated by other factors (other than need). With respect to NA and India (both

regions where software versions in English are dominant), the participants are relatively

homogenous with respect to them being driven by functional needs.

4.4 Project Choices

Modular projects: Variance differences are high across samples. We find strong sample

variances across North America and India; as well as between China and India (the statistical

significance was not found in the North America – China comparison). Further, considering the

standard deviations shown in Table 3, the India sample is less diverse compared to NA and

China. In other words, Indian programmers have a more homogeneous outlook on modularity

than their NA and China counterparts. One reason could be the software engineering discipline

embedded in the Indian firms’ daily routines as evident in the disproportionate numbers of

globally-ranked CMM5 Level 5 firms in the country which can be viewed as an indicator of the

software engineering maturity of the developer pool in India.

Large teams: We find some country level differences across the three samples. While

we do not find differences at the mean level across the North American and Chinese samples, we

find statistically significant differences in variances between China and India. Even though the

variances are different across the two samples (at the p = 0.10 level), we find that participants

from the China sample were drawn towards larger projects than the Indian counterparts. This

5 The CMM(I) maturity model specified by the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University has often been employed to rate the capabilities of software firms in the awarding of large government and private party software development contracts. As of 2006, close to 75% of the CMMI level 5 software centers are in India (SCAMPI Results: http://seir.sei.cmu.edu/pars/pars_list.asp?s=&m=0, last accessed on July 20th, 2006).

26

could be attributed to several factors. In China, since the software industry is relatively immature

and nascent, there is scarcity of experienced programmers in the software industry. Open source

initiatives provide programmers an otherwise difficult-to-find opportunity for learning. It is not

surprising that such programmers might gravitate towards large open source initiatives for the

immense learning opportunities as well as to better their career and financial prospects for the

future.

Universal projects: We find significant pair-wise variance differences between North

America and both China and India samples (we do not find differences in variance as well as the

means in the China-India comparison). This suggests that the population is very heterogeneous in

these populations limiting the possibility of direct comparisons at the mean level. In conjunction

with the magnitude of standard errors in Table 3, our data suggests that the NA community is

relatively homogeneous in comparison to China and India. Chinese and Indian participants tend

to be diverse in their perceptions of universal projects (versus local projects). Given that both the

countries have a non-trivial proportion of consumers who prefer software targeted at native

language users, it is plausible that there are niche local needs that have not been met by global

software products. Such initiatives have drawn interests from some local developers while the

universal projects have garnered interest from the other developers. This could be driving the

non-homogeneity of the two samples.

4.5 Relationship between Generic Motivations and Project Choices

Sharing/Learning and Project choice: The sharing and learning preferences of

participants are linked with all three project choice preferences, albeit in different forms in the

three samples. Specifically, in the China sample, we find that participants driven by sharing and

learning motives are more likely to participate in modular projects, in large teams, and in

27

universal projects. This relationship is not evident in the NA and Indian samples. This finding is

consistent with Baldwin and Clark [2]. The sharing and learning focus of participants in the

China sample are evident in their project choices. For instance, they expect that modular projects

are more likely to give them more opportunities for sharing their expertise as well as learning

design and programming skills. Modular projects are also likely to be well managed and produce

a usable product in a shorter time span, which should be of interest to participants driven by

functional needs. Participants also viewed that projects developed by large teams provide more

learning opportunities. These relationships were summed up by one participant who was strongly

motivated by sharing and learning motives “… It is important for a programmer to have system

design capabilities. And we can obtain such capabilities from (open source) practice … Open

source software requires examination from a lot of programmers (large projects) … the design is

also changing in order to be perfect…” Further, universal projects (most likely aimed at global

audiences) are perceived as providing greater opportunities for sharing and learning in

comparison to local projects that are developed for the Chinese market.

Financial Benefits and Project choice: Indian participants who are driven by financial

motives and career concerns are drawn towards modular projects, large team initiatives, as well

as universal projects. This is again in line with the matched incentive argument [2]. In India, with

the burgeoning growth of the market for software skills and design expertise, developers are

likely to benefit from participation in state-of-the-art global projects which are likely to help

them shape their skills. This relationship is not as strong in the NA and China sample, even

though the financial incentives-modular project choice link was evident in the latter sample.

Functional need and Project choice: With respect to the relationship between

motivation due to functional need and project choices, we find a weak relationship in the Indian

28

sample but no significance in the other samples. For instance we find that participants who are

involved in FL/OSS initiatives to satisfy a functional need were drawn towards modular projects.

This result could also stem from the strong software engineering background of participants that

we found in the India sample. They are consistent with the view of Parnas [29] that modularity

provides a means to hide irrelevant design aspects of each component from the user and it helps

promote collaboration.

Surprisingly, we find that Indian participants who were driven by functional needs did

not prefer universal projects. This relationship, though, was statistically weak (as shown in Table

5). Such participants preferred to contribute to local projects of relevance to the Indian

community. For example, one participant from this sample, who rated his motivation due to

functional need as very high, noted that he had been and preferred working on local initiatives

such as translations of software into Oriya, a language local to the eastern state of Orissa in India.

Another line of reasoning for such a finding is that the growth of the software industry and the

growing role of software in the Indian economy could be signaling opportunities in the local

market “gaps” that could be potentially filled by newly developed open source software. Another

argument could be that the extensive and repetitive promotion of open source software by the

central and state governments (e.g. [34]) could have increased the awareness of open source. The

availability of talent pool, in conjunction with such governmental efforts, might be driving local

open source software efforts. Future studies using larger sample of data might help explain the

presence or absence of such relationships in a systematic way.

Control factor (Prior experience): We find evidence consistent with expectations. In the

NA sample and the India sample (both of which can be considered relatively mature software

29

development regions), we find that participants with significant prior experience tend to prefer

participation in modular projects. In the China sample, we find that participants with limited

prior experience tend to gravitate toward large team projects (likely due to potential learning

opportunities).

5 Concluding Remarks

In this paper, we study and contrast generic motivations and project-level preferences of

FL/OSS programmers in developed countries, represented by North America, and developing

countries, represented by China and India. We find that there are strong differences in the

motives for participation. We find certain differences in the level of intrinsic motives (sharing

and learning), extrinsic motives (financial benefit driven), and internalized extrinsic (functional

need-driven) motivation. Further, we examine the project choice preferences among the

participants in these samples to understand initiatives (projects) that are likely to be successful in

the three regions.

We find that all the three communities are strongly driven by the desire to gain

development expertise and share their skills with other developers in the community in spite of

the strong differences in the extent of individualism in the three cultures (Hofstede 1980). In

comparative terms, we find that North American participants were more driven by these motives

than developers in China. Financial concerns were more important to Chinese and Indian

participants in comparison to North American FL/OSS participants. This complements the

evidence of high Power Distance measures for China and India (Table 1) in comparison to NA.

Further, participants in the three samples varied considerably in their motivation to participate

due to their functional needs.

30

Project preferences differed considerably across the three samples of participants. We

found the Indian sample of developers to be relatively homogenous in their preference for

modularly-designed FL/OSS initiatives. This is probably due to the maturity of software

development and the software engineering discipline that characterize the Indian software

industry as a whole, which cast strong influence on programmers’ project preferences in FL/OSS.

In addition, participants in China were attracted to large FL/OSS initiatives, likely due to their

limited experience in large-scale software development. Finally, participants in NA were

relatively homogeneous in their preference for universal projects, while Chinese and Indian

participants varied considerably in their preferences. The latter could be attributed to the more

diverse technical backgrounds of programmers in developing countries.

We also find strong relationships between the generic motivational factors and project

preferences of participants. Specifically, we observe that both extrinsic as well as intrinsic

motives might be associated with project preferences. Chinese participants who were driven by

sharing and learning motives preferred modular, large and universal projects. Our results also

suggest partial support for the argument that participation in FL/OSS initiatives might provide

potential financial benefits and these motives could influence project preferences of participants.

For instance, participants in India who were driven by financial opportunities provided by

FL/OSS were found to prefer modular projects, large team initiatives as well as universal

projects.

We believe that understanding these results is important for making policy decisions

related to FL/OSS, especially in developing economies such as India and China. For example,

since sharing and learning is a strong motivational factor, offering more FL/OSS-related

educational opportunities will help improve programmers’ learning experience through

31

participation in open source. In addition, we expect economic policy in developing countries

favoring FL/OSS-related businesses to have a positive impact in programmer participation.

FL/OSS can be used as a means to provide exposure to systematic, collaborative software

development, an experience that is hard to obtain except for those working for multinational

software companies. Developing country programmers who are drawn to FL/OSS by both

extrinsic and intrinsic motivations also prefer working in large, modular and universal projects,

the same characteristics of projects developed in multinational software companies. This is quite

different from programmers in developed countries, where we observe no particular relationship

between the two sets of motivational factors.

Future studies may contribute to the literature by expanding the study to include a wide

array of motivational factors, and conducting a large scale survey across cultures to increase the

generalizability of results which would be a challenge in small sample study such as ours.

32

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Table 1: Hofstede Measures for North America, China and India Measure North America6 China India Individualism 86 20 48 Uncertainty Avoidance 47 40 40 Power Distance 40 80 77 Masculinity 57 50 56 Long term orientation 26 118 61

Table 2: Taxonomy of FL/OSS Incentive Research

Generic Motivation factors

Study Findings

Sharing and Learning (Intrinsic)

Lakhani and Wolf (2005)

Improving skills is an important motivator for participation

Shah (2006) Community norms of reciprocity and need-driven learning often motivate participants

Lerner and Tirole (2002)

Reputation effects matter to developers

Financial benefits and reputation (Extrinsic)

Hann et al (2002) Higher status in a merit-based ranking within the Apache Project does lead to significantly higher wages

Shah (2006) Most developers do not foresee a link between participation and better job prospects

User needs (internalized extrinsic)

Raymond (2000) Programmers start open source to “scratch[ing] a developer’s personal itch”, i.e. to satisfy a need.

Lerner and Tirole (2002)

User benefits are key to a number of open source projects

Lakhani and von Hippel (2003)

User needs explain contribution to not only source code, but also less glamorous tasks such as documentation and support, as users benefit from the opportunity to learn through public posting of answers and questions

Franke and von Hippel (2003)

User needs are heterogeneous and users modifying their own software are more satisfied than non-nnovating users

Lakhani and Wolf (2005)

A majority (58%) of programmers cite user needs as a motivator of contribution. These include personal needs (34% of all respondents) and professional needs (30% of all respondents).

Shah (2006) Many developers participate because of their own needs.

6 We averaged the scores of USA and Canada for this measure; they were similar in these five dimensions.

36

Table 3: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations (Variables indicate likelihood of participation)

NA China India Pairwise Pearson Correlations (* => significance of p ≤ 0.05)

Variable

Mean

Std. Dev.

Mean Std. Dev.

Mean Std. Dev.

Fin. ben.

Fun.need

Modprj.

Lrg. prj.

Univ. prj.

Generic motivational factors Sharing and learning 6.38 1.54 5.79 1.86 6.21 1.13 0.18 0.34* 0.45* 0.14 0.52* Financial benefits 3.56 1.41 4.86 1.77 4.47 1.58 1 0.54* 0.39* 0.18 0.17 Functional needs 4.25 1.34 4.90 1.82 4.74 1.05 0.54* 1 0.46* 0.16 0.21 Project choice Modular projects 5.44 1.26 5.25 1.84 5.84 0.96 0.39* 0.46* 1 0.18 0.25* Projects involving large teams 4.06 1.69 4.34 1.57 3.53 1.07 0.18 0.16 0.18 1 0.17 Universal projects 4.81 0.98 5.17 1.79 5.11 1.45 0.17 0.21 0.25* 0.17 1 Control Factor Prior experience in open source development (in years)

3.37 2.77 1.88 1.60 4.02 2.96 - 0.01 0.02 0.32* -0.08 -0.03

Table 4: Population Comparisons – NA, China, India

{Wilcoxon Rank Sum/Mann Whitney Test (Null – means are equal): Z-statistics shown for mean comparisons; Levene’s Test for Equality of Variance Test (Null – variances are equal): F-Statistics shown}

North America vs. China

North America vs. India

China vs. India

Variable

Z (means) F (variance)

Z (means) F (variance)

Z (means) F (variance)

Generic motivational factors Sharing and learning + 1.72 * 0.55 + 1.17 0.10 - 0.56 1.41 Financial benefits -2.49 ** 1.33 - 1.71 * 0.00 + 0.99 1.11 Functional need -1.37 3.49 * - 0.85 0.05 + 0.66 6.27 ** Project choice Modular projects - 0.08 1.36 - 0.85 5.37 ** - 0.68 8.19 *** Projects involving large teams - 0.44 0.05 + 1.07 1.67 + 1.69 * 3.98 * Universal projects - 1.59 5.19 ** - 0.69 5.38 ** + 0.48 0.42 Control Factor Prior experience +2.09 ** 0.24 - 0.72 1.94 - 2.43 ** 4.71 **

(Note: *** - 0.01 level of significance, ** - 0.05 level of significance; * - 0.10 level of sig.)

Table 5: Alignment between Generic factors and Project preferences (MANOVA correlations are shown)

Project Preferences -> Modular projects Projects involving large teams Universal projects

Generic motivational factors

NA (R2=0.45)

China (R2=0.65)

India (R2=0.48)

NA (R2=0.11)

China (R2=0.25)

India (R2=0.27)

NA (R2=0.19)

China (R2=0.51)

India (R2=0.20)

Sharing and Learning n.s. + 0.61*** n.s. n.s. + 0.68 * n.s. n.s. + 0.73 ** n.s. Financial Incentives n.s. + 0.20 * + 0.32 * n.s. n.s. + 0.51 * n.s. n.s. + 0.55 * Functional Needs n.s. n.s. + 0.33 * n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s. - 0.39 * Control: Prior Exp + 0.61 ** n.s. + 0.34 * n.s. - 0.50 * n.s. n.s. n.s. n.s.

(Note: *** - 0.01 level of significance; ** - 0.05 level of significance, * - 0.10 level of significance)

37

Ramanath Subramanyam is an assistant professor of Management Information Systems at the Department of Business Administration, College of Business, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Michigan. His research interests include Software Engineering and Project Management, Design Metrics in Software, Customer Integration in Software Development, IT and Software Outsourcing, and Business Value of Information Technology. His articles have been published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. Mu Xia is an assistant professor of Management Information Systems in the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests are business-to-business e-commerce; combinatorial auctions; e-Business standards and the formation and evolution of enterprise networks. His papers have been published in journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, Electronic Markets, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Information Technology and International Development and Transportation Research Record.