The attraction of contributors in free and open source software projects

  • Authors:

  • Carlos Santos;George Kuk;Fabio Kon;John Pearson

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Brasilia, Department of Management, Caixa-Postal: 4320, 70910-900 Brasilia, DF, Brazil;Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham, UK;Department of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo, 207-C, Rua do Matão, 1010, Cidade Universitária, 05508-090 São Paulo, SP, Braz ...;Department of Management Information Systems, College of Business, Rehn Hall, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Rehn 210-A, Mail Code 4627, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA

  • Venue:
  • The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

As firms increasingly sanction an open sourcing strategy, the question of which open source project to undertake remains tentative. The lack of established metrics makes it difficult to formulate such strategy. While many projects have been formed and created, only a few managed to remain active. With the majority of these projects failing, firms need a reliable set of criteria to assess what makes a project appealing not only to developers but also to visitors, users and commercial sponsors. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model to explore the contextual and causal factors of project attractiveness in inducing activities such as source code contribution, software maintenance, and usage. We test our model with data derived from more than 4000 projects spanning 4years. Our main findings include that projects' set of conditions such as license restrictiveness and their available resources provide the context that directly influence the amount of work activities observed in the projects. It was also found that indirect and unintended contributions such as recommending software, despite of being non-technical, cannot be ignored for project activeness, diffusion and sustainability. Finally, our analysis provide evidence that higher attractiveness leads to more code-related activities with the downside of slowing down responsiveness to address projects' tasks, such as the implementation of new features and bug fixes. Our model underscores the significance of the reinforcing effects of attractiveness and work activities in open source projects, giving us the opportunity to discuss strategies to manage common traps such as the liability of newness. We conclude by discussing the applicability of the research model to other user-led initiatives.