Intrinsic Motivation versus Signaling in Open Source Software Development

This papers sheds light on the puzzling fact that even though open <p> source software (OSS) is a public good, it is developed for free by <p> highly qualified, young, motivated individuals, and evolves at a rapid <p> pace. We show that when OSS development is understood as the private <p> provision of a public good, these features emerge quite naturally. <p> We adapt a dynamic private-provision-of-public-goods model to reflect <p> key aspects of the OSS phenomenon. Apart from extrinsic motives <p> (namely signaling), the present model also contains intrinsic motives <p> of OSS programmers, such as play value or homo ludens payoff, userprogrammers’ <p> and gift culture benefits. Such intrinsic motives feature <p> extensively in the wider OSS literature and contribute new insights to <p> the economic analysis