"Cool" or "monster"?: company takeovers and their effect on open source community participation

Authors:
Aditya Johri;Oded Nov;Raktim Mitra
Affiliations:
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA;Polytechnic Institute of NYU, Brooklyn, NY;Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2011 iConference
Year:
2011

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Abstract

In this study, we investigate the effect of takeover announcements made by open-source software (OSS) steward firms, on participation in an OSS newcomers' online community. We examine a MySQL newcomer forum before and after two takeover announcements -- the January 2008 announcement of MySQL's takeover by Sun Microsystems, and the April 2009 announcement of Sun's takeover by Oracle. We find that the impact on participation depends on how the acquiring company is perceived. The announcement of an acquisition by a company perceived as hostile had a negative effect on participation, whereas announcement of acquisition by a more friendly company was found to have no effect on participation. These changes in participation occurred without any accompanying change in the product itself, or its licensing. This work provides the evidence of the effect of external events on online participation.