Empowering the users? A critical textual analysis of the role of users in open source software development

The term is criticized since it positions people only as users of a ‘particular piece of technology’, even though these people and their motives for interacting with the technology include much more (i.e., they are, e.g., particular types of workers, carrying out their work tasks that in part include also the use of the technology, etc.), which should be acknowledged through the terms used. However, in this paper the OSS users are not known in more detail, due to which the paper settles for the very general term user and prospective term reader (again, people being positioned only as ‘readers of a particular piece of text’).

However, it is acknowledged that the metaphor of text clearly provides only a limited viewpoint to the IT artifact development. The limitations have been summarized, e.g., by Iivari (2006): it is emphasized that the metaphor is a particularly limiting one when applied in the IT artifact use context. “Conceptualizing implementation/adoption/use of IT artifacts as mere ‘reading’ does not do justice to the heterogeneity and multiplicity of material and non-discursive practices and consequences of the implementation/adoption/use of the IT artifacts. IT artifacts are not only texts waiting to be read by the readers, but they are texts that will actually be ‘put in use’ and ‘have effects’ in a much broader sense than, e.g., television programs or advertisements; safety-critical systems could be taken as an extreme example.” (Iivari 2006, p. 192). Therefore, it is acknowledged that people interact with physical items in the world. People (i.e., the users, readers) are not only socially constructed, but they act and interact with each other and with the IT artifacts in the material world. However, in the IT artifact development context the metaphor succeeds in emphasizing very important issues, which will be discussed further in the discussion part of the paper.

‘Social constructivism’ has been criticized to be an overused and obscure term (see, e.g., Hacking 1999). It is suggested that one could prefer ‘socially produced’ instead (e.g., Hacking 1999), which is done in this paper.