The Invisible Coat-tail. Successful Collaboration in Open-Source Communities
The Invisible Coat-tail. Successful Collaboration in Open-Source Communities
Abstract
Online collaboration is often organized without strong predetermined rules or central authority, which is why coordination and ways of organizing cooperation become crucial elements of collaboration. This article investigates how online projects can overcome problems of dispersed work, solve inherent contradictions, and utilize tensions in the activity system to develop collaborative artifacts and practices. To this end, we introduce cultural-historical activity theory as our theoretical framework. We introduce the notion of ‘coat-tailing’ – a term used to denote the parallel pursuit of individual and collective objectives – as a successful mechanism for online coordination and cooperation in co-configurative (Engeström 2004) online projects. Empirical evidence is based on a detailed observation of a successful open-source project – the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Our findings show that work tools and rules are designed to match individual expectations and to enable individual activity, where the collective activity is achieved by ‘piggybacking’ on the fulfilment of the individual task. In other words, coat-tailing systems enable ‘doing just one thing together’.
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Keywords:
Online collaborationcoat-tailing systemsonline projects