Endurance in Open Online Communities : An Examination of Visibility and Focus of Attention in the Context of Free/Libre Open Source Software Projects

The remarkable success of open source software applications, such as the Mozilla web browser and the Apache server, which have surpassed the success of most of their commercial counterparts (Mockus et al. 2002), can be attributed, to a large part, to the knowledge collaboration (Faraj et al. 2011) and consequent innovations (von Krogh and von Hippel 2006; O'Mahony and Ferraro 2007) that take place in the online communities that foster FLOSS projects. Even when the FLOSS movement has transcended its mythical beginnings as groups of hackers' working voluntarily in software projects, the consciousness of kind, shared rituals and traditions, and a sense of duty or obligation among members are community markers that persist (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2006)