Group items tagged

Industrial AgeInformation Age Focus on measurable outcomesFocus on strategic issues using participation and empowerment Individual accountabilityTeam accountability Clearly differentiated-segmented organisational roles, positions and responsibilitiesMatrix arrangement - flexible positions and responsibilities Hierarchical, linear information flowsMultiple interface, 'boundaryless' information networking Initiatives for improvement emanate from a management eliteInitiatives for improvement emanate from all directions

There is only one layer between the community of Linux developers and Linus: the "trusted lieutenants". They are a dozen hackers that have done considerably extended work on a particular part of the kernel to gain Linus' trust. The "trusted lieutenants" are responsible to maintain a part of the Linux Kernel and lots of developers sent their patches (their code) directly to them, instead of Linus. Of course, apart from Linus that has encouraged this to happen, this informal mechanism represents a natural selection by the community since the "trusted lieutenants" are recognised [by the community] as being not owners but simple experts in particular areas [57] and thus, their 'authority' can always be openly challenged. This does not mean that Linus has more influence than they have. Recently, "Alan Cox (one of the "trusted" ones) disagreed with Linus over some obscure technical issue and it looks like the community really does get to judge by backing Alan and making Linus to acknowledge that he made a bad choice" [58].

In 1991, Linus Torvalds made a free Unix-like kernel (a core part of the operating system) available on the Internet and invited all hackers interested to participate. Within the next two months, the first version 1.0 of Linux was released. From that point, tens of thousands of developers, dispersed globally and communicating via the Internet, contributed code, so that early in 1993, Linux had grown to be a stable, reliable and very powerful operating system. The Linux kernel is 'copylefted' software, patented under the GNU GPL, and thus, nobody actually owns it. But more significantly, Linux is sheltered by the Open Source (hacker) community. From its very birth, Linux as a project has mobilised an incredible number of developers offering enhancements, modifications/improvements and bug fixes without any financial incentive. Despite the fact that an operating system is supposed to be developed only by a closely-knit team to avoid rising complexity and communication costs of coordination (Brook's Law), Linux is being developed in a massive decentralised mode under no central planning, an amazing feat given that it has not evolved into chaos. Innovation release early and often: Linus put into practice an innovative and paradox model of developing software. Frequent releases and updates (several times in a week) are typical throughout the entire development period of Linux. In this way, Linus kept the community constantly stimulated by the rapid growth of the project and provided an extraordinary effective mechanism of psychologically rewarding his co-developers for their contributions that were implemented in the last version. On top of this, in every released version, there is a file attached which lists all those who have contributed (code). Credit attribution if neglected, is a cardinal sin that will breed bitterness within the community and discourage developers from further contributing to the project. According to conventional software-building wisdom, early versions are by definition buggy and you do not want to wear out the patience of your users. But as far as the Linux development stage is concerned, developers are the users themselves and this is where most innovation is created (Figure 8). "The greatest innovation of Linux is that treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging" (Raymond, 1998a).

The results of the analysis of gender and age indicators reveal that the numbers of males and females, and of adults and teens, are roughly equal, especially in the later sub-sample.

There is also a skewed distribution of the gender and age of blog authors in relation to blog type. In a recent study, Herring, Scheidt, Bonus and Wright (2004) found evidence of three basic types of weblogs: the content of filters is external to the blogger (links to world events, online happenings, etc.), while the content of personal journals is internal (the blogger's thoughts and internal workings), and k(nowledge)-logs are repositories of information and observations with a typically technological focus. In the present study, we coded each blog in the sample as journal, filter, k-log, or mixed (a combination of two or all of the first three types).

Are weblogs inherently “democratizing,” in the sense of giving voice to diverse populations of users? The empirical findings reported for gender and age at the beginning of this essay suggest that they are. Yet public commentators on weblogs, including many bloggers themselves, collude in reproducing gender and age-based hierarchy in the blogosphere, demonstrating once again that even an open access technology—and high hopes for its use—cannot guarantee socially equitable outcomes in a society that continues to embrace hierarchical values.