Role of Project Owner in OSS Project: Based on Impression Formation and Social Capital Theory

Saerom Lee, Hyunmi Baek, Jungjoo Jahng

Abstract


With the increasing socio-economic value of an open collaboration over the Internet, it has become significantly important to successfully manage open source software development program. Most of the previous research have focused on various factors that influence the performance of the project, but studies on how the project owners recognized as “leader” affect the outcome of the project are very limited. This research investigates how individual and governance characteristics of an owner influences the performance of project based on impression formation and social capital theory. For a data set, we collect 611 Repositories and the owner’s data from the open source development platform Github, and we form knowledge sharing network of an each repository by using social network analysis. We use hierarchical regression analysis, and our results show that a leader, who exposes a lot of one’s personal information or who has actively followed and showed interests to communicate with other developers, affects positive impacts on project performance. A leader who has a high centrality in knowledge sharing network also positively affects on project performance. On the other hand, if a leader was highly willing to accept external knowledge or is recognized as an expert in the community with large numbers of followers, the result show negative impacts on project performance. The research may serve as a useful guideline not only for the future open source software projects but also for the effective management of different types of open collaboration.


Full Text:

PDF

References


Adams, P., Capiluppi, A., and Boldyreff, C., “Coordination and productivity issues in free software: The role of brooks’ law,” in Software Maintenance, ICSM 2009, IEEE International Conference on, 2009.

Ahn, H. and Kim, S., “A study on the victim prevention through community network: focusing on effect of social capital and network,” Correction Review, Vol. 18, pp. 121-143, 2003.

Aksulu, A. and Wade, M., “A comprehensive review and synthesis of open source research,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 11, No. 11, pp. 576-656, 2010.

Antheunis, M., Valkenburg, P., and Peter, J., “Getting acquainted through social network sites: Testing a model of online uncertainty reduction and social attraction,” Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 100-109, 2010.

Baek, H. and Oh, S., “Identifying the network characteristics of contributors that affect performance in open collaboration: Focusing on the GitHub open source,” The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 23-43, 2015.

Baek, H., Ahn, J., and Ha, S., “Identifying factors affecting helpfulness of online reviews: The moderating role of product price,” The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 93-112. 2011.

Baker, W., “Market networks and corporate behavior,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 96, No. 3, pp. 589-625, 1990.

Blincoe, K., Sheoran, J., Goggins, Sl., Petakovic, E., and Damian, D., “Understanding the popular users: Following, affiliation influence and leadership on GitHub,” Information and Software Technology, Vol. 70, pp. 30-39, 2016.

Bosu, A., Carver, J., Guadangno, R., Bassett, B., McCallum, D., and Hochstein, L., “Peer impressions in open source organizations: A survey,” Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 94, pp. 4-15, 2014.

Bourdieu, P., The form of capital: Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, JG Richardson, New York, Greenwood Press, 1986.

Briggs, P., Burford, B., De Angeli, A., and Lynch, P., “Trust in online advice,” Social science computer review, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 321-332, 2002.

Burt, R., Structural holes: The social structure of competition, Harvard university press, 2009.

Chengalur-Smith, S. and Sidorova, A., “Survival of open-source projects: A population ecology perspective,” in Proceedings of ICIS, 2003.

Cho, Y. and Bang, J., “Social Network Analysis for New Product Recommendation,” Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 183-200, 2009.

Choi, J., Ferwerda, B., Hahn, J., Kim, J., and Moon, J., “Impact of social features implemented in open collaboration platforms on volunteer self-organization: case study of open source software development,” in Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, 2013.

Coleman, J., “Social capital in the creation of human capital,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, pp. S95-S120, 1988.

Comino, S., Manenti, F. M., and Parisi, M. L., From planning to mature: on the determinants of open source take off, 2005.

Cosentino, V., Izquierdo, J., and Cabot, J., “Three metrics to explore the openness of GitHub projects,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.4253, 2014.

Crowston, K., Annabi, H., and Howison, J., “Defining open source software project success,” in proceedings of ICIS, 2003.

Dabbish, L., Stuart, C., Tsay, J., and Herbsleb, J., “Social coding in github: transparency and collaboration in an open software repository,” in Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2012.

Dahlander, L. and O’Mahony, S., “Progressing to the center: Coordinating project work,” Organization Science, Vol. 22, No. 4 pp. 961-979, 2011.

Darley, J. and Latane, B., “Bystander intervention in emergencies: diffusion of responsibility,” Journal of personality and social psychology, Vol. 8, p. 377, 1968.

Davis, R., “Git and GitHub for librarians,” Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 158-164, 2015.

Dourish, P. and Bellotti, V., “Awareness and coordination in shared workspaces,” in Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work, 1992.

Dubrovsky, V., Kiesler, S., and Sethna, B., “The equalization phenomenon: Status effects in computer-mediated and face-to-face decision-making groups,” Human-computer Interaction, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 119-146, 1991.

Faraj, S., Kudaravalli, S., and Wasko, M., “Leading collaboration in online communites,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 393-412, 2015.

Feliciano, J., Towards a collaborative learning platform: The use of GitHub in computer science and software engineering courses, University of Victoria, 2015.

Fleming, L. and Waguespack, D., “Brokerage, boundary spanning, and leadership in open innovation communities,” Organization Science, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 165-180, 2007.

Fortune, Github CEO: What I Learned from Our Harassment Scandal, Daniel Roberts, 2015.

Fukuyama, F., “Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity,” 1995.

Gibbs, J., Ellison, N., and Lai, C., “First comes love, then comes Google: An investigation of uncertainty reduction strategies and self-disclosure in online dating,” Communication Research, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 70-100, 2011.

Giuri, P., Ploner, M., Rullani, Fl., and Torrisi, S., “Skills, division of labor and performance in collective inventions: Evidence from open source software,” International Journal of Industrial Organization, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 54-68, 2010.

Giuri, P., Rullani, F., and Torrisi, S., “Explaining leadership in virtual teams: The case of open source software,” Information Economics and Policy, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 305-315, 2008.

Grewal, R., Lilien, G., and Mallapragada, G., “Location, location, location: How network embeddedness affects project success in open source systems,” Management Science, Vol. 52, No. 7, pp. 1043-1056, 2006.

Gulati, R. and Gargiulo, M., “Where do interorganizational networks come from?,” American Journal of Sociology, pp. 177-231, 1999.

Gutwin, C., Schneider, K., Paquitte, D., and Penner, R., Supporting group awareness in distributed software development, in Engineering Human Computer Interaction and Interactive Systems, Springer, pp. 383-397, 2004.

Hahn, J., Moon, J., and Zhang, C., “Emergence of new project teams from open source software developer networks: Impact of prior collaboration ties,” Information Systems Research, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 369-391, 2008.

Hars, A. and Ou, S., “Working for free? Motivations of participating in open source projects,” in System Sciences, 2001, in Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference, 2001.

Hertel, G., Niedner, S., and Herrmann, S., “Motivation of software developers in open source projects: an Internet-based survey of contributors to the Linux kernel,” Research policy, Vol. 32, No. 7, pp. 1159-1177, 2003.

Hippel, E. and Krogh, G., “Open source software and the private-collective innovation model: Issues for organization science,” Organization science, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 209-223, 2003.

Ke, W. and Zhang, P., “The effects of extrinsic motivations and satisfaction in open source software development,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 11, No. 12, pp. 784-808, 2010.

Kiesler, S., Siegel, J., and McGuire, T., “Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication,” American psychologist, Vol. 39, No. 10, p. 1123, 1984.

Ko, S., Hwang, B., and Ji, B., “A study on social network service and online social capital: Focusing on a Korean and Chinese case,” The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 103-118, 2010.

Kwak, G., Social Network Analysis, CheongRam, 2014.

Lerner, J. and Tirole, J., “The scope of open source licensing,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 20-56, 2005.

Lerner, J. and Tirole, J., “The open source movement: Key research questions,” European Economic Review, Vol. 45, No. 4, pp. 819-826, 2001.

Lerner, J. and Triole, J., The simple economics of open source, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2000.

Lima, A., Rossi, L., and Musolesi, M., “Coding together at scale: GitHub asa collaborative social network,” in Proceedings of 8th AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2014.

Longo, J. and Kelley, T., “Use of GitHub as a platform for open collaboration on text documents,” in Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, 2015.

Ma, M. and Agarwal, R., “Through a glass darkly: Information technology design, identity verification, and knowledge contribution in online communities,” Information systems research, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 42-67, 2007.

Markus, M. and Agres, B., “What makes a virtual organization work?,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, p. 13, 2000.

Marlow, J., Dabbish, L., and Herbsleb, J., “Impression formation in online peer production: activity traces and personal profiles in github,” in Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work, 2013.

Moon, J. and Sproull, L., Essence of distributed work: The case of the Linux kernel, Distributed Work, The MIT Press, London, England, pp. 381-404, 2002.

Moore, C., Impression formation, 2007, Blackwell.

Nakakoji, K., Yamamoto, Y., Nishinaka, Y., Kishida, K., and Ye, Y., “Evolution patterns of open-source software systems and communities,” in Proceedings of the international workshop on Principles of software evolution, 2002.

Norman, D., “Some observations on mental models,” Mental Models, Vol. 7, No. 112, pp. 7-14, 1983.

O’Mahony, S. and Ferraro, F., “Hacking alone? The effects of online and offline participation on open source community leadership,” Working Paper, 2004.

Perens, B., The open source definition, Open sources: voices from the open source revolution, pp. 171-188, 1999.

Raymond, E. and Young, B., Thecathedral and the bazaar-musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revoltionary, (rev. ed.), O’reilly, 2001.

Reinhardt, R. and Jaitner, A., Intellectual capital and knowledge management: Perspectives on measuring knowledge, Handbook of organizational learning and knowledge, pp. 794-820, 2001.

Sarker, S. and Schneider, C., “Seeing remote team members as leaders: A study of US-Scandinavian teams,” Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 75-94, 2009.

Singh, P., Tan Y., and Mookerjee, V., “Network effects: The influence of structural social capital on open source project success,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2011.

Sproull, L. and Kiesler, S., “Reducing social context cues: Electronic mail in organizational communication,” Management science, Vol. 32, No.11, pp. 1492-1512, 1986.

Stewart, K., Ammeter, A., and Maruping, L., “Impacts of license choice and organizational sponsorship on user interest and development activity in open source software projects,” Information Systems Research, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 126-144, 2006.

Suh, B. and Park, J. H., “The Impact of Opinion Leadership on the Attitude Change by the Direction of Word-of-Mouth under the Online Social Networking Service Environment,” The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 111-130, 2013.

Uleman, J. and Kressel, L., A brief history of theory and research on impression formation, Oxford handbook of Social Cognition, pp. 53-73, 2013.

Vasilescu, B., Filkov, V., and Serebrenik, A., “Perceptions of diversity on GitHub: A user survey,” CHASE. IEEE, 2015.

Von Krogh, G., Haefliger, S., Spaeth, S., and Wallin, M., “Carrots and rainbows: motivation and social practice in open source software development,” MIS Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 679-676, 2012.

Walther, J., “Interpersonal effects in computer-mediated interaction a relational perspective,” Communication research, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 52-90, 1992.

Wikipedia, Github. 2016.01.14; Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub.

Xu, J. and Madey, G., “Exploration of the open source software community,” Proceedings of North American Association for Computational Social and Organizational Science(NAACSOS), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 2004.

Ye, Y. and Kishida, K., “Toward an understanding of the motivation of open source software developers,” in Proceedings. 25th International Conference, 2003.

Yoo, Y. and Alavi, M., “Emergent leadership in virtual teams: what do emergent leaders do?,” Information and Organization, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 27-58, 2004.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.