Open source software (OSS) development methodology that promises to produce reliable, flexible, and high quality software code, at minimal cost, by harnessing the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process and has become increasingly popular in the past few years. For-profit companies have increasingly adopted the OSS paradigm to produce quality software at low cost. A vast majority of OSS projects depend on voluntary contributions by developers to sustain their development. In this context, turnover of developers has been considered a critical issue hindering the success of projects. This dissertation develops two studies addressing the issue. The first study is a methodological pilot and lays the foundation of this research by focusing on modeling turnover behavior of core open source contributors using a logistic hierarchical linear modeling approach. It argues that argue that taking both the developer and the project level factors into account will lead to a richer understanding of the issue of turnover in open source projects. The second study provides a conceptual integration of developer and project level factors using the Ownership, Role theory and Social Identity literatures, and proposes testable hypotheses, methods and findings. The implications of this research are likely to benefit OSS managers in understanding the developer and project level factors associated with developer turnover and the contexts in which they interact
