Mobilization of Software Developers: The Free Software Movement

The paper has three purposes: the first is to provide a deeper understanding of the ideology and work practices of free and open source software development, the second to characterize the free software movement as a new type of computerization movement and the third to present a conceptual diagram and framework with an analysis showing how the free software computerization movement has evolved into an occupational community. Qualitative data were collected over a four year period using a virtual ethnography in a study of free and open source software development and, in particular, a study of a free software community, GNU enterprise, which has the goal of developing a free enterprise resource planning software system.