Spring 2006 Vol. 9 No. 1

https://surface.syr.edu/ischool_news/1006/thumbnail.jp

Sustainability of Free/Libre Open Source Projects: A Longitudinal Study

This paper examines the factors that influence the long-term sustainability of FLOSS projects. A model of project sustainability based on organizational ecology is developed and tested empirically. Data about activity and contribution patterns over the course of five years for 2,772 projects registered with SourceForge is analyzed. Our results suggest that the size of the project’s development base, project age and the size of niche occupied by the project are positively related to the project’s ability to attract user and/or developer resources. The ability to attract resources is an indicator of the perceived project legitimacy, which in turn is a strong predictor of the project’s future sustainability. Thus a project’s ability to attract developer and user resources is shown to play a mediating role between the demographic (size and age) and ecological (niche) characteristics of the project and its future sustainability. Our results support the applicability of tenets of organizational ecology related to the liability of smallness, the liability of newness, and population characteristics (niche size) to the FLOSS development environment. The implications of the results for future research and practice are discussed

A Comprehensive Review and Synthesis of Open Source Research

The open source movement has grown steadily and matured in recent years, and this growth has been mirrored by a rise in open source related research. The objective of this paper is to pause and reflect on the state of the field. We start by conducting a comprehensive literature review of open source research, and organize the resulting 618 peer-reviewed articles into a taxonomy. Elements of this taxonomy are defined and described. We then draw on a number of existing categorization schemes to develop a framework to situate open source research within a wider nomological network. Building on concepts from systems theory, we propose a holistic framework of open source research. This framework incorporates current research, as represented by the taxonomy, identifies gaps and areas of overlap, and charts a path for future work

Future research on FLOSS development

The following commentary is part of First Monday's Special Issue #2: Open Source