Communication Network Characteristics of Open Source Communities

Empirical research has shown that social network structure is a critical success factor for various kinds of work groups. The authors extended this research to a new type of work group—the open source software project community—with the objective of exploring the role of communication networks within these intriguing projects. Using archival data from 143 open source project groups, the authors compiled six measures of social network structure and analyzed these in relation to four measures of group success. This study found that the social network structures of these project communities did not appear to be critical success factors at all, but rather they had no significant impact on success or their effect was opposite of that seen in prior studies of work groups. Various conjectures were suggested that might explain these results, offering opportunities for further research.

[1]  Sebastian Spaeth,et al.  Knowledge Reuse in Open Source Software: An Exploratory Study of 15 Open Source Projects , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[2]  Fred P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month , 1975, Reliable Software.

[3]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  The social structure of free and open source software development , 2005, First Monday.

[4]  Alan MacCormack,et al.  Exploring the Structure of Complex Software Designs: An Empirical Study of Open Source and Proprietary Code , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[5]  Kathleen M. Carley,et al.  A Social Network Approach to Free/Open Source Software Simulation , 2005 .

[6]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Hierarchy and centralization in free and open source software team communications , 2006 .

[7]  S. Ghoshal,et al.  Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage , 1998 .

[8]  D. Harrison,et al.  TIES, LEADERS, AND TIME IN TEAMS: STRONG INFERENCE ABOUT NETWORK STRUCTURE'S EFFECTS ON TEAM VIABILITY AND PERFORMANCE , 2006 .

[9]  E. Wenger.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

[10]  Steven B. Andrews,et al.  Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition , 1995, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[11]  Jesús M. González-Barahona,et al.  Applying Social Network Analysis to the Information in CVS Repositories , 2004, MSR.

[12]  Yutaka Yamauchi,et al.  Collaboration with Lean Media: how open-source software succeeds , 2000, CSCW '00.

[13]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Shared Mental Models among Open Source Software Developers , 2008, Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2008).

[14]  Giovan Francesco Lanzara,et al.  The Knowledge Ecology of Open-Source Software Projects , 2003 .

[15]  Kalle Lyytinen,et al.  Groupware Environments as Action Constitutive Resources: A Social Action Framework for Analyzing Groupware Technologies , 1997, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[16]  B. Tabachnick,et al.  Using Multivariate Statistics , 1983 .

[17]  Earl R. Babbie,et al.  The Basics Of Social Research , 1998 .

[18]  Robert D. Putnam,et al.  Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community , 2000, CSCW '00.

[19]  Heng-Li Yang,et al.  Team structure and team performance in IS development: a social network perspective , 2004, Inf. Manag..

[20]  Kathleen M. Carley.  Computational and mathematical organization theory: Perspective and directions , 1995, Comput. Math. Organ. Theory.

[21]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Towards a Portfolio of FLOSS Project Success Measures , 2004, ICSE 2004.

[22]  Robin Teigland,et al.  Integrating Knowledge through Information Trading: Examining the Relationship between Boundary Spanning Communication and Individual Performance , 2003, Decis. Sci..

[23]  Martin W. Wallin,et al.  A man on the inside: Unlocking communities as complementary assets , 2006 .

[24]  Katherine J. Stewart,et al.  An Exploratory Study of Factors Influencing the Level of Vitality and Popularity of Open Source Projects , 2002, ICIS.

[25]  P. Bourdieu.  Forms of Capital , 2002 .

[26]  Sandro Pinna,et al.  Open Source Communities as Social Networks: An Analysis of Some Peculiar Characteristics , 2008 .

[27]  Georg von Krogh,et al.  The Promise of Research on Open Source Software , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[28]  Peter A. Gloor,et al.  Correlating temporal communication patterns of the Eclipse open source community with performance and creativity , 2007, Comput. Math. Organ. Theory.

[29]  Parag C. Pendharkar,et al.  The relationship between software development team size and software development cost , 2009, CACM.

[30]  S. Borgatti,et al.  The centrality of groups and classes , 1999 .

[31]  Robert E. Cole,et al.  From a Firm-Based to a Community-Based Model of Knowledge Creation: The Case of the Linux Kernel Development , 2003, Organ. Sci..

[32]  Narasimhaiah Gorla,et al.  Who should work with whom?: building effective software project teams , 2004, CACM.

[33]  Mark S. Granovetter.  Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness , 1985, American Journal of Sociology.

[34]  Walt Scacchi,et al.  Understanding the requirements for developing open source software systems , 2002, IEE Proc. Softw..

[35]  Gary L. Lilien,et al.  Location, Location, Location: How Network Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems , 2006, Manag. Sci..

[36]  Karim R. Lakhani,et al.  Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects , 2003 .

[37]  Greg Madey,et al.  THE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PHENOMENON: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON SOCIAL NETWORK THEORY , 2002 .

[38]  Jin Xu,et al.  A Topological Analysis of the Open Souce Software Development Community , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[39]  David Hinds,et al.  Social network structure as a critical success condition for open source software project communities , 2008 .

[40]  Ioannis Stamelos,et al.  Identifying knowledge brokers that yield software engineering knowledge in OSS projects , 2006, Inf. Softw. Technol..

[41]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity , 1998 .

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

[43]  Stanley Wasserman,et al.  Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications , 1994 .

[44]  H. Jennings,et al.  Who Shall Survive , 2007 .

[45]  Kouichi Kishida,et al.  The Co-Evolution of Systems and Communities in Free and Open Source Software Development , 2005 .