people and get something done
even with diverse interests and
players. This diversity appeals to
a community of people working
toward a common goal: design-
ers, developers, users, and other
contributors producing software
for social good.
Social participation for open
source designers means embrac-
ing opportunities to engage in
participatory culture, making
social connections in a commu-
nity where their design skills are
valuable resources.

ment is a matter of establishing your authority with science and data or easing your way into the project carefully by building trust and slowly establishing merit by offering design solutions for various issues both in the bug tracker and for the overall user experience. Bossy, critical designers won’t be welcome in any FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) environment. Understanding this culture, however, helps any designer consider how to begin integrating into open source culture.

Photograph by Andre w Turner

open source community culture Open source community culture differs widely depending on the type of software being developed, the number of members, and the business model, among other factors. Overall, open source-software culture includes a community of developers and users who are passionate about the software they are producing. They are proud of their achievements and continuously work to improve the technical specifications of the software. As such, their customs surround a culture of rationality. This means they have a tendency to think about their users in the same way—as technologically rational. The technical rationality is not new and often occurs in other software-development contexts, but open source developers tend to treat their projects as their babies, so they are very protective. Joining an open source project is a matter of understanding the culture, easing into the environment, and building trust and social capital with the other community members. Some debate exists over whether coming into an open source environ-

community structure and
decision-making Power
The onion model depicts commu-
nity structure in open source (see
Figure 1), and its concentric rings
represent decision-making power
with respect to contributions [ 2].
At the innermost core, decision
making is most concentrated. The
core team consists of one or more
developers who make decisions
about the software’s direction
and contributions to the code
base. The next three outward
circles consist of developers. The
committers have commit rights
that allow admission of code
into the main code base. Active
developers regularly contribute to
the source code repository, while
peripheral developers submit
code as patches, meaning their
code does not enter the main
code base until a review from the
core team. The last two circles
represent users. Active users con-
tribute documentation, localiza-
tion, supporting users in discus-
sion forums, or filing bug reports.
Passive users download and use
the software without connecting
to the community.

[ 3] Hedberg, H., and Iivari, N. “Integrating HCI Specialists into Open Source Software Development Projects.” In The 5th Int. Conf. on Open Source Systems, 251–263, 2009.

• Data drives from Sahana loaded with a Web interface for viewing infrastructure data, imagery, and response information were sent to the Haitian government.