Diversity of participants in open source projects: comparing individual demographics and participation rationales in software, content, fun, and business communities
Open source innovation gained its momentum with software development but nowadays spread well beyond this project type and has attracted numerous participants. So far, literature ignores widely these further project examples and assumes that project types are equal in terms of their participants. We challenge this assumption and postulate member diversity between project types. We stretch beyond repeatedly analyzed cases of iconic software initiatives by including content communities as well as we introduce fun and business project types to have a appropriate resemblance of digital production communities. Our analysis reveals significant differences within and between projects in both, participants' demographic and contribution rationales. Thus the contributions of this study are multifold and target (1) phenomenon enrichment, e.g. a detailed comparison of the open source landscape with as yet unconsidered community types, (2) research validation, e.g. replication of earlier studies aligned to latest developments and with yet lacking samples, and (3) theoretical advancement as we respond to the call to contextualize research and spark off the discussion of diversity in open source innovation.