Discursive Modulation in Open Source Software: How Online Communities Shape Novelty and Complexity
研究了两个开源Web框架社区如何通过话语调制实践，在没有强层级结构的情况下塑造软件的新颖性和复杂性，提出了新颖性从近端到远端搜索、复杂性从集成到弃用的调制理论。
We study the development of two open source software (OSS) web frameworks to understand how OSS communities shape software novelty and complexity in the absence of strong organizational hierarchies. We examine how projects engage in distinct “discursive modulation practices” to imprint the community’s shared core doctrines and design principles onto the software thereby shaping its novelty and complexity. We borrow the concept of modulation from audio synthesis to explain how a preexisting signal—in our case, the ongoing community discourse—is modulated to produce varying sounds—in our case, the novelty and complexity of the software. The concept of modulation offers a lens to understand how emergent, community-wide development activities are influenced by filtering discursive positions and mixing those positions, thereby shaping the artifact’s novelty and complexity. Our research shows that the modulation of novelty exhibits a range from “proximal” to “distal” searches for new features, while the modulation of complexity varies between “integration” and “deprecation.” By drawing on these concepts, we formulate a theory that explains how modulation results in alternative OSS community approaches to shaping software novelty and complexity and how this process reflects and is reflected in the resulting software artifact.