Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 Is Bigger Always Better?: Toward a Resource-Based Model of Open Source Software Development Communities. Glen Sagers Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF BUSINESS IS BIGGER ALWAYS BETTER? TOWARD A RESOURCE-BASED MODEL OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITIES. By GLEN SAGERS A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Management Information Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor Of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2007 The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Glen Sagers defended on March 12th, 2007. David Paradice _____________________________ Professor Directing Dissertation G. Stacy Sirmans _____________________________ Outside Committee Member Molly Wasko _____________________________ Committee Member Katherine Chudoba _____________________________ Committee Member Approved: _______________________________________________________ Caryn Beck-Dudley, Dean, College of Business The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation co-chairs, Drs. Molly Wasko and David Paradice for their patience, support and guidance in this process, and for their aid in clarifying my thinking on this study. I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Drs. G. Stacy Sirmans and Kathy Chudoba, for their advice for making this research more focused. I appreciate the advice and commiseration of my fellow doctoral students. I would like to thank Dr. Terry Dennis and the faculty at Illinois State University for believing in me during the final stages of this dissertation. I wish to thank my wife, Sharon and my mother and father, Diane & Larry, for their proofreading of various drafts of this document. Finally, I wish to thank my wife and children for their infinite patience over the last few years, it would not have been possible without them to lean on. I would also like to thank those individuals who have contributed to open source software. They not only made this dissertation topic possible, they made it much more pleasant to write. I would particularly like to thank those who have contributed to the OpenOffice.org project, the excellent office suite used for the writing and figures in this document. I also wish to thank those who have contributed to Bibus, a great citation manager that works perfectly with OpenOffice.org. Finally, I would like to thank those who have contributed to Linux, KDE, Mozilla (Firefox especially) and the many utilities that make up a modern Linux distribution. As I have used these software packages for the past six or seven years, they have progressed from programmers hobbies to production quality software thanks to the contributions of many thousands of individuals. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES..........................................................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................................vii ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................viii 1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................1 2. CONCEPTUAL MODEL & THEORETICAL FOUNDATION...............................................4 2.1 Background...........................................................................................................................4 2.1.1 The OSS Concept..........................................................................................................4 2.1.2 OSS vs. Proprietary Software Development.................................................................7 2.2 The Social Dilemma of OSS.................................................................................................7 2.2.1 Public Goods.................................................................................................................8 2.2.2 Production of Public Goods...........................................................................................8 2.2.3 Consumption of Public Goods.......................................................................................9 2.2.4 Sustaining Public Goods..............................................................................................10 2.3 Defining OSS Projects........................................................................................................14 2.4 Prior Research.....................................................................................................................16 2.4.1 Business and Advocacy Studies..................................................................................17 2.4.2 Demographic & Motivational Studies.........................................................................17 2.4.3 Economic Studies........................................................................................................18 2.4.4 Software Quality Studies.............................................................................................18 2.4.5 OSS Project Organization and Governance Studies....................................................19 2.5 Gap in Prior Research ........................................................................................................25 2.5.1 Communities................................................................................................................25 2.5.2 Research Questions.....................................................................................................26 2.6 Resource-Based Model of Online Social Structures...........................................................27 2.6.1 Resource Availability..................................................................................................27 2.6.2 Benefit Creation Process.............................................................................................27 2.6.3 Attraction and Retention..............................................................................................28 2.7 Adapted Theoretical Model.................................................................................................29 2.7.1 Assessing OSS Software Success................................................................................30 2.7.2 Adapted Model............................................................................................................31 3. RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES..........................................................................33 3.1 Hypotheses..........................................................................................................................33 3.1.1 Resources and Communication Activities...................................................................33 3.1.2 Communication Activities and Success......................................................................35 3.1.3 Success and Sustainability...........................................................................................39 4. METHODOLOGY...................................................................................................................44 4.1 Sample and Procedures.......................................................................................................44 4.2 Measures.............................................................................................................................47 iv 4.2.1 Resources.....................................................................................................................47 4.2.2 Support Communication Activities.............................................................................47 4.2.3 Development Communication Activities ...................................................................49 4.2.4 Software Success.........................................................................................................50 4.2.5 Community Success....................................................................................................52 4.2.6 Attraction and Retention..............................................................................................53 5. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS...................................................................................................55 5.1 Preliminary Analyses..........................................................................................................55 5.2 PLS Results.........................................................................................................................56 5.3 Model Testing.....................................................................................................................58 5.4 Exploratory Analysis...........................................................................................................65 6. DISCUSSION...........................................................................................................................71 6.1 Supported Hypotheses.........................................................................................................71 6.2 Partially Supported Hypotheses..........................................................................................72