Core and Periphery in Free/Libre and Open Source Software Team Communications

Core contributors were classified using contributors' level of activity during the pretreatment period, measured by number of commits, into core contributors (top 25%) and peripheral contributors (rest 75%).

“For the conceptualization of core contributors we used contributors' level of activity during the pretreatment period, measured by the number of commits, to classify contributors into core contributors (top 25%) and peripheral contributors (rest 75%) (Setia et al. 2012, Crowston et al. 2006).”

Both internal members (vendors and project contributors) and peripheral members (project users and open source foundations) can create collective action threats through situational and cross-project changes in member positions.

“In this, our research highlights how both internal members (i.e., vendors and project contributors) and peripheral members (i.e., project users and open source foundations) can create collective action threats though situational and cross-project changes in member positions (Nakakoji et al. 2002;Crowston et al. 2006).”

Core developers primarily design the overall architecture, write code, maintain control over the codebase, and guide the long-term development of the project.

“Core developers primarily design the overall architecture, write code, maintain control over the codebase, and guide the long-term development of the project”

Peripheral developers contribute code on a more irregular basis and tend to focus on bug fixes and incremental feature additions.

“peripheral developers contribute code on a more irregular basis and tend to focus on bug fixes and incremental feature additions (Crowston et al. 2006, Setia et al. 2012, Gousios et al. 2014).”