Lessons from volunteering and free/libre open source software development for the future of work

Abstract

In this paper, we review research on voluntary organizations to identify key features of and problems in volunteer work and organizations. We then use the example of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development teams to examine how those features and problems apply in this situation and how they might be affected by the use of information and communications technologies (ICT). We suggest that understanding volunteer organizations can illuminate the changing nature of all knowledge work, paid as well as unpaid. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.