Get to know your geek: Towards a sociological understanding of incentives developing privacy-friendly free and open source software

Abstract

In this paper we sketch a road map towards a sociological understanding of software developers’ motivations to implement privacy features. Although there are a number of studies concerning incentives for developers, these accounts make little contribution to a comprehensive sociological understanding, as they are either based on a simplistic view of FOSS development in terms of altruism vs. utilitarianism, or are focused on individual psychological factors, leaving room for research that takes into account the complex social context of FOSS development. To address this gap, we propose a mixed methods approach, incorporating the strengths of qualitative and quantitative techniques for a comprehensive understanding of FOSS development as a social field. We then sketch how we envision developing a game theoretic approach based on the gathered data to analyze the situation in the field with respect to privacy features and propose relevant changes in policy and best practices.