Hahn, Moon and Zhang
(2010) investigate the impact of new open source software (OSS) success based
on the developers past relationships with developers on previous projects. OSS
has many high profile cases that have performed extraordinarily well, such as Apache,
Linux, OpenOffice, and PHP. On the other hand, the large majority of OSS
projects fail due to the inability to attract a large number of developers to
contribute to the project. In this study Hahn, Moon and Zhang (2010) focus on
OSS project teams forming and more specifically on the joining behaviors of
developers. Through an empirical test, they discovered that the previous
relationships with other developers do increase the probability that an OSS
project will attract more developers. Additionally, the study found that a
prior developer’s tie with a project initiator increases the probability that a
developer will join a project started by a past collaborator. Therefore, past
ties with developers increases the probability of the OSS project success.
Evidence of their study follows the critical mass theory and resource
dependence theory. Participants will join a project only if it is perceived
value is high and some of the perceived value comes from the developers who
create the software. Additionally, if a project fails to attract developers in
the early stages it will also fail to attract developers in subsequent
development stages.
Reference
Hahn, J., Moon, J.Y., &
Zhang, C. (2010). Emergence of new project teams from open source software
developer networks: Impact of prior collaboration ties. Information Systems Research, 19(3), 369-405.
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