| Abstract: |
Geert Hofstede presented statistical evidence purporting to identify
intercultural co-operation and its importance for survival in his scholarship
work ÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂcultures and
organizationsÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ. This article presents a study, which
describes how differences in national culture can affect or influence the
participation of programmers who produce open source software (OSS). The four
important dimensions of national cultures considered by Hofstede model namely
Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism Index (IAV), Masculinity-Feminity
Index (MAS) and Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) are selected and correlated
with the Geographical Distribution of Developers Index (GDD) for testing the
above hypothesis. It is suggested that there exists some correlation between
the cultural factors and the demographics of programmers who participate in
the open source movement. Finally, the manner in which these cultural factors
impinge on the incentives of the programmers who are engaged in open source
movement by writing codes for free are also discussed. |