THE PRACTICE OF KNOWLEDGE REUSE IN OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: "SHIFTING THE CREATIVE EFFORT".

Knowledge reuse is fundamental to innovation in many fields, including software development. To date, there is no systematic investigation of knowledge reuse in open source software projects. This study attempts to fill this gap. The focus is on the practice of knowledge reuse which consists of the inventory and the incidents of knowledge reuse. The study inductively develops theory based on quantitative and qualitative data drawn from a sample of six open source software projects. We find that knowledge reuse is extensive across the sample and that developers shift their creative effort over time, from reusing software more than writing, to writing more than reusing. Implications for research and management practice are discussed.