The life cycle process of knowledge sharing in free software communities: Sharing profiles and motivations

Knowledge is an obtainable, renewable, dynamic, context-dependent resource that can be shared, and the knowledge sharing cycle has 2 processes: knowledge donation, when a person voluntarily offers his/her intellectual capital to others, and knowledge collection, when a person consults other people's intellectual capital. Knowledge can be shared among individuals, groups, and organizations. A free software community is a type of community of practice arranged around a specific free software, where the knowledge shared is complex and the knowledge sharing processes have scarcely been studied. This investigation aims to identify the profiles of knowledge sharing processes in free software communities and examine how 6 motivations for sharing knowledge in free software communities are associated with each of the clusters. To accomplish this objective, a survey method was adopted, with 260 respondents belonging to free software communities. Cluster analysis was used to interpret the data. Four clusters were identified: Sporadic Sharer; Collector; Donator; and Constant Sharer. With the exception of the Sporadic Sharer, all the clusters presented high values of both collection and donation, including the Donators and Collectors. These results confirm the view of free software communities as communities of practice and highlight the importance of knowledge sharing in free software development cycle. The results reveal the importance of the Constant Sharer profile, which has the highest rates of donation and collection and is also the profile in which all the motivations appear with the highest values, indicating its key role in the functioning of free software communities.