Engineering an Occupation: Open Source as a Emerging Professional Culture Despite little or no funding,
the lack of a formal structure, and reliance on volunteer labor, many open source groups have been able to create software, which equals or exceed the performance of proprietary solutions, and often within a shorter timeframe. My research examines whether the open source
phenomena is an evolving form of work organization and professional community through the use of ethnographic observation and interviews with members of a Linux and a BSD project.
This presentation will consider two aspects of the open source phenomena: the negotiation of roles and task coordination within a non-hierarchical organization, and whether the ‘open source movement’ is a form of
occupational resurgence for software developers. I will consider whether the open source movement is an evolving global ‘occupational community’ which provides a form of peer review for computer programming not typically available to programmers, and whether participation in open source projects socializes members into occupational norms and work roles.