User:Kameell/sandbox

Code sharing (not to be confused with the aviation business arrangement codeshare or codeshare agreement) is the online sharing of source code for Free and Open-Source Software (F/OSS). Members of F/OSS communities create, adapt and openly share code in order to collaboratively improve the architecture of software.

Distribution on platforms

On open-code sharing platforms, contributors to the open-source community can both share and get access to source code in order to contribute to F/OSS communities. Source code is open for simultaneous complete use, which means that multiple people can employ it simultaneously without this having any effect on the quality or the value of the source code and the software it belongs to. People can share code with others without losing it themselves and without this having any impact on the code. Through sharing and developing code collaboratively, members can achieve more than they could individually. Some examples for popular code-sharing platforms are dabblet, Pastie, EtherPad, Gist, CodePen, TinyPaste, Code Pad and Github.

Community building through sharing

F/OSS communities have a long history of sharing source code, knowledge, social approval, communal ties and a hacker ethics. Besides that they show a deep and passionate involvement with their community, and the projects (freely) share very sophisticated pieces of software. In this way, through the practices of code sharing, F/OSS communities constitute a virtual community.

In her 2012 essay "Let the Source be with you!", Andrea Hemetsberger writes about the community aspects and the practices of sharing in F/OSS communities. With the help of her empirical research on the F/OSS network, Hemetsberger identifies five central practices of code sharing, namely: "materializing intellectual capital (sharing code/economic capital), creating intellectual capital (knowledge sharing), seeding of culture (sharing social capital), relating and bonding (sharing symbolic capital), and signifying (sharing cultural capital)."

In the practices of code sharing, Hemetsberger uses the concepts of sharing in, sharing out, and sharing across to describe the ways in which source codes are shared in F/OSS communities.

• 'Sharing in' builds trust and makes members bond with each other through the extensive sharing of economic, social and cultural capital. This form of sharing is exclusive and only happens between members of the community. This practice of sharing helps "strengthening the inner core" of the sharing community.
• 'Sharing out' happens when members of the community share their knowledge and resources with others outside the community. When source code is shared in this way, it strengthens weaker ties between the members of the F/OSS communities and the public. 'Sharing out' is based on the idea that it is in everyone's interest to share information and resources.
• 'Sharing across' is introduced by Hemetsberger to indicate a hybrid form of 'sharing in' and 'sharing out'. This practice of sharing operates beyond the borders of community across core members, contributors, and the public.

According to Alison B Powell, the sharing of code causes a tension between two ideas of how knowledge should be distributed. Participants in communities that share code have to agree together on if they want to protect their intellectual property rights (IPR), or if they want to operate through a commons-based peer production model.