This document discusses the motivations and identities that drive participation in open source software projects, as well as integrity and privacy issues that can arise from user data. It examines how: 1) Individuals are motivated to contribute to open source projects through signaling incentives like ego gratification and career concerns. Strong personal identities that others relate to and appreciate also drive participation. 2) AOL released search data of over 650,000 users, allowing one woman's searches to be tracked back to her identity, highlighting issues of unintentional "give offs" or traces of data. 3) Users' navigation and requests on websites like Amazon communicate social actions with consequences, and sites cultivate user identities through the

1. Sowing the Seeds of Self:
A Socio-Pragmatic Penetration of
the Web Artefact
Pär J. Ågerfalk
Uppsala University
Lero – The Irish Software Engineering Research Centre
Jonas Sjöström
Jönköping International Business School
Linköping University

2. Open innovation
Web 2.0
Users—from passive consumers to active
producers (content providers)
Network effects
Trust your customers as co-developers
Open Source Software (OSS)
From ideological volunteer movement to
serious commercial alternative

3. Motivation
What motivates people to give away their
intellectual property for free?
The signalling incentive
Ego gratification
Career concerns
Lerner, J., and Tirole, J. (2002) “Some Simple Economics of Open Source,”
The Journal of Industrial Economics, 50(2), pp. 197-234.

4. Identity
Identity requires “both an intense
Kierkegaardian total commitment to some
cause or person that discloses a new world for
an individual and a Hegelian working out of
that commitment so that others recognize that
new world as making more sense than their
former world, so that they see the individual
who brought it about as a leader and that new
world as their world.”
Flores, F. (1998) “Information Technology and the Institution of Identity: Reflections since Understanding Computers
and Cognition,” Information Technology & People, 11(4), pp. 352–372.

5. Corporate and personal identity
Strong personal identity
The signalling incentive
Strong commitment that others can relate to
and appreciate
Corporations can tailor their Web presence
Strong corporate identity attracts people

6. What about integrity?
Last year, AOL released search data of more than
650,000 users. Although actual user names were
replaced with random numbers, all the search terms
of single users were possible to track and by using
these search terms it was possible to track down an
individual. Apparently, No. 4417749 conducted
hundreds of searches over a three-month period and
eventually the data trail led to Thelma Arnold, a 62-
year-old widow in Lilburn, GA, who confirmed the
searches were indeed hers.
The New York Times, August 9, 2006

7. Technological give offs
Give offs
The often non-verbal signs that help to situate
and verify what we say
Often unintentional
Arguably, Thelma Arnold “gave off” a
number of incidental traces
Essential action v. Incidental action
Goffman E (1959) “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” Doubleday: Garden City, New York.
Dietz, J. L. G. (2003) “The Atoms, Molecules and Fibers of Organizations,”
Data & Knowledge Engineering, 47(3), pp. 301–325.

8. The user interface
Designers
User Interface
Interpret What can be done
action (action repertoire )
possibilities
Interpret
What others say
business
(prerequisites ) Other business actors
messages
as communicators
Create
A business actor What I say
business
as communicator (result )
messages
& interpreter
Other business actors
What I want to do next
Navigate
as interpreters
(retrieval or movement )
Sjöström, J. and Goldkuhl, G. (2004) “The Semiotics of User Interfaces: A Socio-Pragmatic Perspective,” In Virtual, Distributed and
Flexible Organisations: Studies in Organisational Semiotics, Liu, K. (eds.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands

9. Essential action at Amazon.com
0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Suspicious reader, May 8, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
No points, no correctness, no validation, no value!
What the hell is this book for? Is it just a manifestation that free
software is bad?
Comment | Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
Balanced and business-focused, March 26, 2002
Reviewer: Mike Tarrani quot;www.tarrani.comquot; (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
This may be the perfect book about open source software because it places open source
within the context of business value and does not promote it as the great panacea that
characterize the message of far too many books on the subject.
[…]

10. Incidental action at
Amazon.com
# Host Explanation Purpose Performer Agency
1 sb.google.com The request is Verify host Browser On behalf of
forwarded to Google’s safety Plugin: Google user
safe browsing service. toolbar
2 www.amazon.com The request to get a Request action Browser: User On behalf of
web page is sent to the from server action user
Amazon web server.
3 [...]s-amazon.com Requests for images are Request images Browser On behalf of
sent to another Amazon from server user
web server.
4 sb.google.com Multiple requests are Verify host Browser On behalf of
sent to Google’s safe safety Plugin: Google user
browsing service. toolbar
5 [...]bleclick.net A request is sent to Espionage Browser: On behalf of
some advertisment Webb Amazon
host. application
6 [...]vertising.com A request is sent to Espionage Browser: On behalf of
some advertisment Webb Amazon
host. application
7 [...]eries.google.com A request is sent to Contribute to Browser On behalf of
Google’s page ranking page ranking Plugin: Google user
service. toolbar
8 m1.2mdn.net A request is sent to Espionage Browser: On behalf of
some advertisment Webb Amazon
host. application

11. Conclusions – 4 principles
Communicative navigation
Navigation actions are communication actions with social
consequences
Identity cultivation
Multiple interests with implications for the gathering and
storing of information about both essential and incidental
actions
Reflective delegation
Users may unknowingly delegate communicatively oriented
tasks to the IT artefact
Maintained intentionality
Users’ awareness of their action responsibilities and
commitments may eventually fade—from essential to
incidental

12. That’s all folks
Questions?