Open source software success: Measures and analysis

Despite a growing body of research on OSS production, much remains to be learned. One important issue concerns the measures of OSS project success and its determinants. In this paper, we empirically study the determinants of OSS success as measured by the number of subscribers and developers working on an OSS project. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our model forecasts these success measures more accurately as compared to a naive model. We find that OSS projects that develop software to work on Windows/UNIX/Linux operating systems, and developed using C or its derivative languages experience larger increase in subscribers and attract more developers than projects that do not have these characteristics. OSS projects with semi-restrictive licenses have fewer subscribers and attract fewer developers. Interestingly, OSS projects that accept financial donations and are targeted at IS/IT professionals have more subscribers than others, although these characteristics do not affect the developer base. The number of subscribers and developers increases with the age of the OSS project. Finally, the impact of developers on subscribers and subscribers on developers is positive and significant.

[1]  Dennis M. Ritchie.  The development of the C programming language , 1996 .

[2]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Open source software projects as virtual organisations: competency rallying for software development , 2002, IEE Proc. Softw..

[3]  Chaim Fershtman,et al.  Open source software: Motivation and restrictive licensing , 2007 .

[4]  J. Singer,et al.  Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis , 2003 .

[5]  Sandra Slaughter,et al.  Why Developers Participate in Open Source Software Projects: An Empirical Investigation , 2004, ICIS.

[6]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Information systems success in free and open source software development: theory and measures , 2006, Softw. Process. Improv. Pract..

[7]  B. Kogut,et al.  Open-source Software Development and Distributed Innovation , 2001 .

[8]  Josh Lerner,et al.  The Simple Economics of Open Source , 2000 .

[10]  Giuseppe De Giacomo.  History of Programming Languages , 2006 .

[11]  Barry W. Boehm,et al.  Quantitative evaluation of software quality , 1976, ICSE '76.

[12]  Chris DiBona,et al.  Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution , 1999 .

[13]  Walter F. Tichy,et al.  Proceedings 25th International Conference on Software Engineering , 2003, 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2003. Proceedings..

[14]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  The Perils and Pitfalls of Mining SourceForge , 2004, MSR.

[15]  Ian Gorton,et al.  Software component quality assessment in practice: successes and practical impediments , 2002, Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering. ICSE 2002.

[16]  Chandrasekar Subramaniam,et al.  Understanding Open Source Software: A Research Classification Framework , 2006, Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[17]  Katherine J. Stewart,et al.  The Impact of Ideology on Effectiveness in Open Source Software Development Teams , 2006, MIS Q..

[18]  Yochai Benkler,et al.  The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom , 2006 .

[19]  J. Herbsleb,et al.  Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla , 2002, TSEM.

[20]  Chandrasekar Subramaniam,et al.  Determinants of open source software project success: A longitudinal study , 2009, Decis. Support Syst..

[21]  T. Minka,et al.  A useful distribution for fitting discrete data: revival of the Conway–Maxwell–Poisson distribution , 2005 .

[22]  D HerbslebJames,et al.  Two case studies of open source software development , 2002 .

[23]  A. Bonaccorsi,et al.  Why Open Source Software Can Succeed , 2002 .

[24]  Chandrasekar Subramaniam,et al.  Determinants of the Choice of Open Source Software License , 2008, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[25]  Likoebe M. Maruping,et al.  Impacts of License Choice and Organizational Sponsorship on User Interest and Development Activity in Open Source Software Projects , 2006, Inf. Syst. Res..

[26]  Corey Phelps,et al.  Determinants of Open Source Software License Choice: A Social Influence Perspective , 2010 .