Is the source strong with you? A fit perspective to predict sustained participation of FLOSS developers

Despite the notable success of some Free Libre Open Source (FLOSS) projects, the overwhelming majority of FLOSS initiatives fail, mostly because of insufficient long-term participation of developers. In contrast to previous research which focuses on the individual perspective, we approach developer retention from an organizational perspective to help existing project members identify potential long-term contributors who are worth spending their time on. Methodically, we transfer two concepts from professional recruiting, Person-Job (P-J) and Person-Team (P-T) fit, to the FLOSS domain and evaluate their usage to predict FLOSS developer retention. An empirical analysis reveals that both fit concepts are appropriate to explain FLOSS retention behavior. Looking at contributor retention in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects, we find a moderate correlation with P-J fit and a weak correlation with P-T fit

The Impact of Person-Organization Fit and Psychological Ownership on Turnover in Open Source Software Projects

Open source software (OSS) projects represent an alternate form of software production by relying primarily on voluntary contributions. Despite the immense success of several mainstream OSS projects such as Mozilla, Linux, and Apache, a vast majority of such projects fail to sustain their development due to high levels of developer turnover. While existing research in the area has offered a rich foundation, we know little about how developers’ perceptions of fit with the project environment may be moderated by the sense of ownership they have toward the project and how it may impact their turnover intentions. Using survey data from 574 GitHub developers, we tested a model to examine the impact of Person-Organization fit and psychological ownership on developers’ turnover intentions. Our results suggest that two relevant dimensions of fit, namely, value and demands-abilities fit, negatively impact turnover intentions and that their sense of ownership moderates these effects

Google Summer of Code: Student Motivations and Contributions

Several open source software (OSS) projects expect to foster newcomers' onboarding and to receive contributions by participating in engagement programs, like Summers of Code. However, there is little empirical evidence showing why students join such programs. In this paper, we study the well-established Google Summer of Code (GSoC), which is a 3-month OSS engagement program that offers stipends and mentors to students willing to contribute to OSS projects. We combined a survey (students and mentors) and interviews (students) to understand what motivates students to enter GSoC. Our results show that students enter GSoC for an enriching experience, not necessarily to become frequent contributors. Our data suggest that, while the stipends are an important motivator, the students participate for work experience and the ability to attach the name of the supporting organization to their resum\'es. We also discuss practical implications for students, mentors, OSS projects, and Summer of Code programs.Comment: 30 page

Developer Management in FLOSS Projects - Theoretical Concepts and Empirical Evidence

This dissertation derives new ways and methods on how to integrate and bind developers in Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. It examines how sustainable commitment of new contributors can be identified at an early stage, how developers’ geographic dispersion affects their collaboration productivity, if the presence of reputable developers increases teamwork productivity and if mentoring is an appropriate means to bind developers in FLOSS projects. To address these research questions, the thesis builds on established theories and concepts from organizational and social science such as Person-Job (P-J) and Person-Team (P-T) fit, the social practice view and self-determination theory. The results of the performed empirical evaluations suggest that: (i) the derived criteria for P-J and P-T fit are suitable to identify sustained commitment early on, (ii) developers’ offline relationships determine if their spatial and cultural distance becomes a gain or a burden for their collaboration, (iii) the presence of reputable developers increases productivity in FLOSS projects only marginally, (iv) mentoring is an appropriate means to bind developers in FLOSS projectsDiese Dissertation erarbeitet neue Strategien und Methoden, um Entwickler in Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Projekte zu integrieren und langfristig zu binden. Hierzu untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit wie sich die Eignung neuer Entwickler frühzeitig vorhersehen lässt, was für einen Einfluss geographische Distanzen bei der Zusammenarbeit von FLOSS Entwickler haben, ob durch die Anwesenheit namhafter Entwickler die Teamproduktivität steigt und ob Mentoring hilft Entwickler langfristig an FLOSS Projekte zu binden. Für die Bearbeitung dieser Fragen baut die Arbeit auf etablierten Theorien und Konzepten aus der Organisations- und Sozialforschung auf, wie unter anderem dem Person-Job (P-J) und Person-Team (P-T) Fit, der Theorie der sozialen Praxis und der Selbstbestimmungstheorie. Die Ergebnisse der durchgeführten empirischen Untersuchungen zeigen, dass (i) die abgeleiteten Indikatoren zur Bestimmung des P-J und P-T Fit ein geeignetes Kriterium sind, um das langfristige Engagement von Entwicklern zu prognostizieren, (ii) die offline Beziehungen der Entwickler darüber entscheiden ob räumliche und kulturelle Distanz die Zusammenarbeit behindert oder fördert, (iii) die Anwesenheit namhafter Entwickler nur geringfügig die Teamproduktivität erhöht, (iv) Mentoring ein geeignetes Instrument zur Bindung von Entwicklern im Projekt ist

A systematic examination of knowledge loss in open source software projects

Context Open Source Software (OSS) development is a knowledge focused activity which relies heavily on contributors who can be volunteers or paid workers and are geographically distributed. While working on OSS projects contributors acquire project related individualistic knowledge and gain experience and skills, which often remains unshared with others and is usually lost once contributors leave a project. All software development organisations face the problem of knowledge loss as employees leave, but this situation is exasperated in OSS projects where most contributors are volunteers with largely unpredictable engagement durations. Contributor turnover is inevitable due to the transient nature of OSS project workforces causing knowledge loss, which threatens the overall sustainability of OSS projects and impacts negatively on software quality and contributor productivity. Objective The objective of this work is to deeply and systematically investigate the phenomenon of knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects as presented in the state-of-the-art literature and to synthesise the information presented on the topic. Furthermore, based on the learning arising from our investigation it is our intention to identify mechanisms to reduce the overall effects of knowledge loss in OSS projects. Methodology We use the snowballing methodology to identify the relevant literature on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects. This robust methodology for a literature review includes research question, search strategy, inclusion, exclusion, quality criteria, and data synthesis. The search strategy, and inclusion, exclusions and quality criteria are applied as a part of snowballing procedure. Snowballing is considered an efficient and reliable way to conduct a systematic literature review, providing a robust alternative to mechanically searching individual databases for given topics. Result Knowledge sharing in OSS projects is abundant but there is no evidence of a formal strategy or practice to manage knowledge. Due to the dynamic and diverse nature of OSS projects, knowledge management is considered a challenging task and there is a need for a proactive mechanism to share knowledge in the OSS community for knowledge to be reused in the future by the OSS project contributors. From the collection of papers found using snowballing, we consolidated various themes on knowledge loss due to contributor turnover in OSS projects and identified 11 impacts due to knowledge loss in OSS projects, and 10 mitigations to manage with knowledge loss in OSS projects. Conclusion In this paper, we propose future research directions to investigate integration of proactive knowledge retention practices with the existing OSS practices to reduce the current knowledge loss problem. We suggest that there is insufficient attention paid to KM in general in OSS, in particular there would appear to an absence of proactive measures to reduce the potential impact of knowledge loss. We also propose the need for a KM evaluation metric in OSS projects, similar to the ones that evaluate health of online communities, which should help to inform potential consumers of the OSS of the KM status on a project, something that is not existent today

Resistance to IT-induced Change - Theoretical Foundation and Empirical Evidence

In this PhD thesis the question “Why do people reject technologies?” is investigated and a variety of theoretical founded and empirical evaluated answers are given. Too many IT implementation and organizational change projects in firms still fail as the underling Information Systems are inadequately used. The thesis evaluates the reasons for user resistance behavior including individual characteristics such as personality traits, process characteristics, technology characteristics, and characteristics of the change process. Moreover, it can be shown that user resistance is not only related to the observed usage behavior, but also in work- and process-related consequences. The results contribute not only to IT adoption and change management literature, but also to the literature on Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) as the thesis investigates employees’ reactions to information systems in HR departments