Motivations for Open Source Project Participation and Decisions of Software Developers

  • Authors:
  • Dongryul Lee;Byung Cho Kim

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Technology Management, UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology), Ulsan, Korea 689-798;Graduate School of Management of Technology, Sogang University, Seoul, Korea 121-742

  • Venue:
  • Computational Economics
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

We provide a rationale for open source project participation by studying the decision problems of the software programmers, whose types are different in terms of ability and intrinsic motivation. We find that motivations, both intrinsic and extrinsic, and the ability level positively affect the optimal level of effort exerted by the programmers in the open source project. In the commercial project, the programmers with higher ability exert much effort although their high level of effort is not compensated properly. Thus, the open source project might be more likely to attract capable and motivated programmers than the commercial project.