Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Hybrid FOSS Community Innovation

Abstract

FOSS communities are increasingly employing a hybrid model where free, open source software development is combined with commercial customer support to ensure community sustainability. This makes it difficult for peripheral users, who are not part of the core administrative or sponsoring organization to participate meaningfully. The paper presents a study of modes of Legitimate Peripheral Participation by users who attempt to introduce product feature innovations to hybrid FOSS communities. We identify eight modes of virtual peripheral participation by users, exploring the technology and social/community affordances, and the performativity and participation effects that these engender to move peripheral users towards core membership.