Paper Info
Title
The Importance of Social Network Structure in the Open Source Software Developer Community
Abstract
This paper outlines the motivations and methods for analyzing the developer network of open source software (OSS) projects. Previous work done by Hinds [5] suggested social network structure was instrumental towards the success of an OSS project, as measured by activity and output. The follow-up paper by Hinds [4] discovered that his hypotheses, based on social network theory and previous research on the importance of subgroup connectedness, were vastly different than the results of his study of over 100 successful OSS projects. He concluded that the social network structure had no significant effect on project success. We outline how his approach disregarded potentially important factors and through a new study evaluate the role of the OSS developer network as it pertains to long-term project popularity. We also present an initial investigation into the adequacy of using the SourceForge activity percentile as a long-term success metric. In contrast with Hinds, we show that previously existing developer-developer ties are an indicator of past and future project popularity.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1109/HICSS.2010.385
HICSS
Keywords
Field
DocType
social network structure,open source software developer,developer network,oss developer network,future project popularity,social network theory,oss project,project success,long-term success metric,long-term project popularity,successful oss project,social network,public domain software,data mining,collaboration,databases
Social connectedness,Social network,Computer science,Popularity,Knowledge management,Open source software,Project success,Public domain software
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1060-3425
11
0.70
References 
Authors
4
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Matthew Van Antwerp1111.37
Greg Madey21539.65