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Knowledge work artifacts: kernel cousins for free/open source software development

Published: 04 November 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Most empirical studies of peer production have focused on the final products of these efforts (such as software in Free/Open Source projects), but there are also many other knowledge artifacts that improve the effectiveness of the project. This paper presents a study of an intermediate work product, or informalism, used in a Free/Open Source Software project, GNUe. A digest-like artifact called the Kernel Cousin (KC) was used extensively in the project. These KCs allowed critical coordination and memory, but at the cost of considerable effort. The paper presents two examples of the KCs' use in the project as well as an analysis of their benefits and costs.

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cover image ACM Conferences
GROUP '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work
November 2007
422 pages
ISBN:9781595938459
DOI:10.1145/1316624
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 04 November 2007

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Author Tags

  1. CSCW
  2. F/OSS
  3. computer-supported cooperative work
  4. free/open software systems
  5. knowledge artifacts
  6. knowledge management
  7. online discussions
  8. software engineering

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GROUP07
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GROUP07: ACM 2007 International Conference on Supporting Group Work
November 4 - 7, 2007
Florida, Sanibel Island, USA

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