Paper Abstracts

Stewart, Katherine J., Darcy, David P., and Daniel, Sherae “Opportunities and Challenges Applying Functional Data Analysis to the Study of Open Source Software,” Statistical Science (21:2), 2006, p. 167-178.

This paper explores the application of functional data analysis (FDA) as a means to study the dynamics of software evolution in the open source context.  Several challenges in analyzing the data from software projects are discussed, an approach to overcoming those challenges is described, and preliminary results from the analysis of a sample of open source software (OSS) projects are provided.  The results demonstrate the utility of FDA for uncovering and categorizing multiple distinct patterns of evolution in the complexity of OSS projects.  These results are promising in that they demonstrate some patterns in which the complexity of software decreased as the software grew in size, a particularly novel result.  The paper reports preliminary explorations of factors that may be associated with decreasing complexity patterns in these projects.  The paper concludes by describing several next steps for this research project as well as some questions for which more sophisticated analytical techniques may be needed.
 

Stewart, Katherine J. and Gosain, Sanjay. “The Impact of Ideology on Effectiveness in Open Source Software Development Teams” MIS Quarterly (30:2), 2006, pp.291-314.

The emerging work on understanding open source software has questioned what leads to effectiveness in OSS development teams in the absence of formal controls, and it has pointed to the importance of ideology.  This paper develops a framework of the OSS community ideology (including specific norms, beliefs, and values) and a theoretical model to show how adherence to components of the ideology impacts effectiveness in OSS teams.  The model is based on the idea that the tenets of the OSS ideology motivate behaviors that enhance cognitive trust and communication quality and encourage identification with the project team, which enhances affective trust.  Trust and communication in turn impact OSS team effectiveness.  The research considers two kinds of effectiveness in OSS teams, the attraction and retention of developer input and the generation of project outputs. Hypotheses regarding antecedents to each are developed. Hypotheses are tested using survey and objective data on OSS projects.  Results support the main thesis that OSS team members’ adherence to the tenets of the OSS community ideology impacts OSS team effectiveness and reveal that different components impact effectiveness in different ways.  Of particular interest is the finding that adherence to some ideological components was beneficial to the effectiveness of the team in terms of attracting and retaining input, but detrimental to the output of the team.  Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
 

Stewart, Katherine J, Ammeter, Tony A. and Maruping, Likoebe “Impacts of License Choice and Organizational Sponsorship on User Interest and Development Activity in Open Source Software Projects,” Information Systems Research (17:2), 2006, pp. 126-144.

What differentiates successful from unsuccessful open source software (OSS) projects? This paper develops and tests a model of the impacts of license restrictiveness and organizational sponsorship on two indicators of success: user interest in, and development activity on, open source software development projects.  Using data gathered from Freshmeat.net and project homepages, the main conclusions derived from the analysis are that (1) license restrictiveness and organizational sponsorship interact to influence user perceptions of the likely utility of OSS in such a way that users are most attracted to projects that are sponsored by non-market organizations and employ non-restrictive licenses and (2) licensing and sponsorship address complementary developer motivations such that the influence of licensing on development activity depends on what kind of organizational sponsor a project has.  Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and the paper outlines several avenues for future research.

Stewart, Katherine J. and Gosain, Sanjay, “The Moderating Role of Development Stage in Affecting Free/Open Source Software Project Performance,” Software Process Improvement and Practice Journal (11:2), 2006, pp. 177-191.

The main thesis developed and tested in this research is that development stage plays an important moderating role in determining both objective and subjective performance outcomes in free/open source software (F/OSS) projects.  This contention is supported by an empirical study of 67 F/OSS projects, with results indicating that subjective performance assessments are calibrated to different objective performance indicators across early and later development stages. The role of team climate variables (trust and shared ideology) in determining both objective and subjective performance also varies across stages. The findings have implications for improving software development processes through appropriate human resource management interventions over the course of F/OSS software projects.