Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: a case study

“Von Krogh et al. (2003) discuss CoPs of software developers in the context of open source software.”

“Studies of the progressive integration of newmembers [8, 29, 32, 40] and the evolution of sustainable groups [15, 25] are common.”

“It is important to have a wide participation in FLOSS projects, which may be the powerful“engine”supporting the high efficiency of code development [22, 34].”

“…the previous intrinsic stimuli, reciprocal social exchange manifested in altruistic and prosocial behavior—an intrinsically motivated person seeks to augment the welfare of other people—can lead to contributions (Kollock, 1999; McLure Wasko and Faraj, 2000; von Krogh et al ., 2003; Zeitlyn, 2003).”

“The four items of the construct were formulated in relation to engagement in an emerging community (von Krogh et al., 2003) and exchange of knowledge beyond strong ties (Granovetter, 1973; Ren et al., 2007).”

“Creating a software product requires significant knowledge resources (Patnayakuni et al., 2007; Sandhawalia and Dalcher, 2010; von Krogh et al., 2003) including ‘‘know-what,” such as a knowledge of functional requirements, and ‘‘know-how,” such as an understanding of programming principles (Rogers,…”

“A number of studies have reported on the prevalence of strong binding norms and ideology in online communities (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2006, Franke and Shah 2003, Stewart and Gosain 2006, von Krogh et al. 2003).”

“[903] have studied how one can join a project, get write access to a source code repository and then how the newcomer specialisation is related to contribution barriers.”

“Nonetheless, the concentration of epistemic interactions within a small group of highly resourceful individuals that is responsible for the majority of contributions results in the emergence of an ideal community structure that not only leads to greater knowledge sharing but also facilitates the management of potentia…”

“or else an expensive one [22].”

“Newcomers who follow this sequence of activities are more likely to be granted privileged access to the source code repository[24].”

“This problem of getting new developers acclimatized to their new project exists in both commercial [5] and open source projects [7].”

“…pe rs on al u se o nl y, a ll ri gh ts r es er ve d. and von Hippel 2012, Benkler 2002, Chatterji and Fabrizio 2013, Cohen et al. 2002, Fey and Birkinshaw 2005, Garriga et al. 2013, von Hippel and von Krogh 2003, von Krogh et al. 2003, Laursen and Salter 2006, Love et al. 2013, Roper et al. 2013).”

“The active body of research on this problem (e.g., [17, 30, 31]) is a testament to the role of community building in collaborative work practices.”

“Social Interactions Socializing with project members [3, 2, 10, 23, 24, 9, 14] Receiving (timely and proper) response [11, 16, 24, 22, 18, 20, 19] Sending a correct/meaningful message [16, 24] Finding Help - Mentor/Expert [4, 6, 19]”

“A key issue for the survival of F/OSS projects is their ability to maintain a significant base of peripheral developers (David & Rullani, 2008; Von Krogh et al., 2003).”

“Even the motivation-related literature focuses on what compels developers to join projects (Von Krogh et al., 2003; Hannebauer and Gruhn, 2017; Alexander Hars, 2002; Silva et al., 2020) and remain active (Zhou and Mockus, 2012; Barcomb, 2014; Yamashita et al., 2016).”

“Rigby et al. studied the review policies and examined which metrics have the largest impact on review efficacy in OSS projects [50, 51]. von Krogh et al. note that some OSS projects have a “socialization” process when accepting technical contributions [73].”

“Newcomers do not receive (timely and proper) response [18], [20], [24], [25], [38–40] Newcomers do not send a correct/meaningful message [24], [38]”

“From the developers’ perspective, joining an existing project is associated with considerable investment because understanding source code related to an application well enough to modify it requires significant effort (Fichman and Kemerer, 1997; von Krogh et al., 2003).”

“Traditional open source indeed imposes barriers to contribution, requiring developers to learn the codebase, identify and install tool infrastructure, socialize into community conventions for contributions, and identify work that might be accepted [7][13].”

“studied the joining script of the Freenet project [12].”

“Krogh et al. (2003) analyzed the strategic process by which new individuals join the community of developers of FreeNet, a peer-to-peer network of information distribution.”

“[5] conducted a qualitative study over Freenet project and proposed the concept of a “joining script” for new developers joining a community.”

“These joining scripts” (von Krogh et al., 2003) need to be followed by possible entrants.”

“When new members attempt to participate without adequate knowledge of the organizational culture, their participation may not be recognized or may even be discouraged (von Krogh et al., 2003).”

“While reducing barriers to contribution in the community (e.g., having less complex rules for acceptable posts) [137] might make introducing new entrants easier, new group members might still violate community norms [79, P.12].”

“Open source software projects do not conform to the traditional transaction cost theory [15]; rather, they thrive on the particular capability for creating and sharing knowledge at a speed and efficiency superior to most software companies by distributing the work in alignment with the knowledge and skill owned by ope…”

“People who initially contribute peripherally may also grow into core roles, helping to sustain the project by replacing developers who leave [21], [79], [80], [81], [82].”

“A large case study reports that some of them advertise their skills on the community communication channels (e.g., forums) [5], in other cases the community itself offers support by establishing mentoring programs [3], [23].”

“…of innovation in virtual communities raises behavioural and motivational questions about why individuals contribute to the innovation process (von Krogh, Späth, and Lakhani 2003), highlighting the role of reputation and status (Raymond 1999), the underlying free software ideology (Stallman…”

“Being granted committer status, that is, the ability to directly modify (“commit”) source code and integrate the contributions of others, is widely seen as a significant event in this process [9, 15, 24, 41, 54, 110], and only those contributors who have sufficiently proven themselves through their activities become c…”

“…to post and solve particular problems, and to develop innovative ideas or new technologies for existing or new applications (von Hippel, 2005; Franke and Shah, 2003; Harhoff et al. 2003; von Krogh et al. 2003; Jeppesen and Frederiksen 2006; von Krogh and von Hippel 2006; Lakhani et al. 2007).”

“…products Lerner and Tirole (2002a), Wichmann (2002a) Exploitation of the R&D activity from the developers’ and the other OS firms Hawkins (2003), Lakhani et al. (2003), Dahlander (2004) Software testing by the users’ community Aoki et al. (2001), von Hippel (2002), Fink (2003) Availability of…”

“As a result, OSS communities have adopted a variety of new ways of producing and distributing OSS (Lee and Cole, 2003; Lerner and Tirole, 2002; van Krogh et al., 2003).”

“Another related theme focused on how peripheral participants advanced to core developers through either legitimate peripheral participation [29] or socialization [14,44].”

“Selecting an appropriate task is difficult and can be a time-consuming and frustrating activity; ultimately, this barrier to onboarding may lead to dropouts [61, 72].”

“Von Krogh et al. [5] proposed a joining script, based on steps that developers need to follow to become part of the project.”

“New contributors to open collaboration projects like Wikipedia and open source so‰ware face both social and technical barriers that make it dicult for them to learn how to participate productively, and discourage them from doing so [11, 28, 31].”

“…create most of the innovation because the developers, rather than the software manufacturers, are the ones who make most of the contributions (von Hippel & von Krogh, 2003, p. 214). von Krogh et al. (2003) emphasize the importance of setting up structures that enable knowledge contribution.”

“Krogh et al. studied Freenet’s developer list for one year and find that of successful joiners, over three-quarters started a new thread, and that the 10% of participants who never received replies dropped out [13].”

“Previous research has mostly focused on new ways to attract developers into OSS (e.g., [6, 7]), to retain them as long-term contributors (e.g., [8, 9, 10]), and to mitigate onboarding barriers (e.g., [11]).”

“Several studies focus on how newcomers join OSS projects [18,30,31].”

“Project newcomers usually make only small changes in the code and rarely contribute entire features [13].”

“To achieve construct validity and greater depth and accuracy, we triangulated multiple sources of evidence (Yin, 1994), which helped validate theoretical constructs (Glaser & Strauss, [1967] 1999).”

“This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the joining script, and has been studied by other researchers [3] [6] [15].”

“The onboarding of newcomers in OSS projects has been widely studied [29, 49].”

“Instead, highly qualified developers often make up the core set of contributors, as their only incentive is to improve the software for their own use or for the intellectual challenge [6, 16].”

“…participation may be driven by diverse intrinsic and extrinsic motivations such as learning, fun, altruism, community identification, member attachment, and need for the collaborative output of the OCWC (e.g., Hertel et al. 2003, Lakhani and Wolf 2005, Ren et al. 2012, von Krogh et al. 2003).”

“Knowledge creation and use is understood to be a social process and innovation researchers thus emphasize importance of community and network (Franke & Von Hippel, 2003) in progressing knowledge development.”

“[15] analyzed interviews with developers, emails, source code repository, and documents of the FreeNet project.”

“All these papers find overwhelming evidence that skill building is an important reason due to which programmers choose to contribute to open source projects. von Krogh, Spaeth, and Lakhani (2003) suggest reasons for why learning by doing happens due to open source participation.”

“Open-source communities (e.g., Nagle, 2018; O ’ Mahony 2003; Raymond, 1999) organize around their common interest in the development of specific products like Linux and Apache software.”

“…that the open disclosure of intermediate results provides a collective memory of the project and helps individuals join the project at any stage (Von Krogh et al., 2003; Franzoni and Sauermann, 2014), leading to increased transparency and building a collective repertoire of knowledge (Puranam…”

“…to the project [26], [44], [45], [46]; • Raising awareness of the project [46], [47], [48]; • Providing new potential core contributors [26], [45], [49], [50], [51]; • Proposing new features [44], [52]; • Contributing new code [26], [44], [45], [53]; • Finding and reporting bugs [54]; • Ensuring…”

“…in order to become an accepted contributor or even an acknowledged member in an OSS community, a potential contributor may have to provide feature gifts [41] in order to gain essential access and influence, but it is an open question what these feature gifts could be in the case of usability work.”

“For example, in many open-source software communities, volunteers must have offered code that meets quality standards before they gain committer status [13],[8].”

“or improve the available OSS software by creating complementary software modules, thus repeatedly contributing to the product (on the issue of modular versus integral product architecture, see Ulrich (1995) ).”

“Unfortunately, it is often dif.cult to become an effective con­tributor on open-source projects due to the complexity of the tools required to develop and test new patches and the challenge of breaking into an already-formed social organization.”

“In other words, corporations need to foster online communities of users in order to generate valuable input into their R&D processes (Von Krogh et al., 2003).”

“16See von Krogh et al. (2003) for an analysis of the processes through which new individuals join and start contributing code to existing FLOSS projects.”