Lesson 1

Motivation & Communities

Newcomers to F/OSS frequently wonder why others would work without payment on F/OSS projects. If this question remains unanswered, their willingness to use and advocate for F/OSS is eroded because they won’t believe that F/OSS can be maintained on par with proprietary counterparts. This lesson addresses the many motivators for participation in F/OSS projects, which provide insight into the “mysterious” investments of time and energy that make F/OSS projects succeed.

The lesson addresses these topics:

  • Human Motivation
  • Motivation for F/OSS Contributors
  • Finding and evaluating F/OSS applications

Advanced Organizer

During the lesson, look for answers to the following questions

NOTE: Consider copying and pasting these questions into your notes to reference while you read and review content
  1. Under what conditions do rewards lead to better performance?
  2. How does sense of purpose relate to motivation?
  3. How can F/OSS development help with career and business contacts?
  4. In the F/OSS world, what are some indicators of sustainability?
  5. How does extrinsic motivation differ from intrinsic motivation?
  6. What profile was typical of F/OSS developers in Lakhani and Wolf’s 2003 study?
  7. What were the top 3 motivations expressed by Sourceforge developers?

Walk-through

1. Watch Dan Pink’s Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us (Youtube, 10:48)


Dan Pink’s discussion of the research on human motivation shows some very interesting ties to F/OSS development. Where creativity and problem-solving are required, quid-pro-quo compensation doesn’t work well. Autonomy, mastery, and sense of purpose do – and F/OSS contributors report these very attributes when working on F/OSS projects!

2. Read: Why Hackers Do What They Do (PDF)

This 2003 study examines the types of motivations expressed by developers of F/OSS SourceForge.net projects. The authors first review three types of motivation: enjoyment-based intrinsic, community-based intrinsic, and extrinsic. Look for substantiation of Dan Pink’s discussion of what motivates us.

Consider This:

  • How does compensation rank in the motivations expressed by the developers?

3. Read Technology Innovation Management Review’s Sustainability in Open Source Software Commons (PDF)

Sustainability of a F/OSS project refers to the likelihood of continuation and success over time. Even commercial products have finite life-spans, but we tend to assume that a profitable corporate developer insures that those products will continue. This research study undertook an examination of F/OSS projects at sourceforge.net, a very popular hub for F/OSS projects and participants. The author confirmed prior literature, concluding that a primary motivator for F/OSS participation is user-centric need – in other words, “Developers participate because they themselves are users of the software or because the organization they work for depends on it”. Others take part to learn from reading others’ code while developing the software, and still others do it as a leisure activity. Where developers have multiple motivations for participation, projects were found to be more successful.

4. Read the Xubuntu project leader’s blog on Why do I contribute to open source? (HTML)

xubuntu-logo-sm

Pasi Lallinaho, a 27-year old geek from Helsinki, Finland explains how he benefits from his work on a F/OSS project.

5. Review Sourceforge, Wikipedia’s F/OSS List, and Schoolforge

Sourceforge explained

F/OSS communities need online hubs to facilitate communication, code development, bug tracking, announcements, and other communication. While some projects build independent sites, there are several central, useful sites from which to build a F/OSS project, or to find existing F/OSS projects.

Sourceforge.net is an online development hub for F/OSS, billed as the place to find, create, and public open-source software for free. It provides hosting to F/OSS projects, and a range of tools for managing projects. It is an excellent place to begin a search for F/OSS you might need for a specific educational purpose. Note that it is only a starting point – many F/OSS projects host elsewhere.  If a project you’re interested in does host on Sourceforge, however, you can get a fair idea of how active the development community is by looking at reviews, download statistics, current bugs, and most recent releases.  Sourceforge may also provide recommended projects to explore based on your search. For instance, looking at the Sakai website suggests other F/OSS learning management systems such as Claroline and Moodle (but does not suggest Canvas, which does not host here!)

Wikipedia maintains a list of F/OSS applications as well. These are categorized, and since it’s wikipedia, you can help maintain the list.

Schoolforge.net is a site devoted to F/OSS for educators. It received a site redesign (October, 2013) with assistance of our College of Education’s Distance Course Design & Consulting group. The renovation enables better software reviews, associated case studies, and sorting by curricular level.

Activity

None this week – consider spending time on the bonus project described below.

Assignments

Blog Entry

  1. Blog Post #9: How can we apply Dan Pink’s 3 factors (autonomy, mastery, purpose) in our own educational contexts? Describe your thoughts on this. Review others’ statements and respond to those that strike you as insightful, or suggest ways to augment or improve them.

Educational Software Reviews (note: due in 2 weeks)

For this assignment, you will identify one F/OSS application you believe will be useful to you in your career. You’ll install, test, and become proficient in the application; then publish a software review for other educators on schoolforge.net.

Identify four or more F/OSS applications that you feel would be useful to you in your career. For example, a science educator might choose Nightshade for for teaching and exploring astronomy, Earth science, and related topics. A math educator might choose Geogebra for teaching interactive geometry, algebra, statistics or calculus. Spend some time on sourceforge, wikipedia, schoolforge, Google, and even the Ubuntu software center in one of your virtual machines.

  1. Blog post #10: Write a blog post that describes your search process for F/OSS that might be useful for your career.
    1. Delineate the four titles you selected, linking them to the projects’ websites
    2. Describe what was interesting about them and your preliminary thoughts on how they would be useful to you
    3. Describe your selection criteria – how did you narrow down to these three titles for your software reviews?
    4. How do you know this is F/OSS?  Link to the license terms. (#4 added late, on 11/29/13… optional, but recommended)
  2. Schoolforge Reviews
    1. Install and test the 4 or more F/OSS applications you selected
    2. Spend time exploring their features and imagining how you might be able to use them for teaching, training, or administrative tasks
    3. Register on the Schoolforge site, and log in.
    4. If your software has not yet been added to Schoolforge, submit it (see the Add Software Project page). Make sure to include an icon (from the project site) and screenshots to help others quickly get a sense for the software.
    5. Compose your reviews in LibreOffice first, and save them. Submit them through the Laulimia Assignments tool.
      1. Be specific about what you found useful and why you’re awarding the number of stars.
      2. Specify the context for which you’re evaluating the software. For instance, if you think the title is useful for younger children or for a specific content area – say that.
      3. If you had difficulty installing or running the software, note how you solved the issue and link to any “help site” or workaround you found useful.
      4. In general, try to make your review useful to other educators who are deciding whether to spend time evaluating this software.
    6. Submit a Schoolforge review for each of the applications you tested.

schoolforge logo

Bonus Opportunity (due before final exam)

Schoolforge will be most useful when populated with quality reviews and case studies. You can earn up to 20 extra credit points by planning, implementing, summarizing, and submitting a pilot implementation and case study to Schoolforge.net. The pilot implementation should be held in a real-world setting – ie, a training session with live participants, a classroom with live students, a school facility where you’re addressing a real problem.  Submit the link to your case study via email to your instructor. A case study should include, minimally:

    1. A problem or need statement.  For instance, you might want to teach 5th graders about North American geography; or you might be looking for computer deployment solution for school computer labs.  Give specifics.
    2. Rationale for selecting the application – again, specifics are helpful and informative.
    3. Describe what you did and who was involved
    4. Describe the outcomes.  Did you achieve your goal? What were students reactions and feedback?

Maximum points will be assigned based on completing the 4 criteria, quality writing, and potential for other educators to learn from your write-up. To maximize your point value, ask one or more peers to review your work before submitting!

Additional Material

  1. Democratizing Innovation (Book in PDF)
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