What makes the right OSS contributer tick?

Author(s)

Inna Smirnova, Markus Georg Reitzig, Oliver Alexy

Abstract

We study how OSS project owners can manage their repositories so as to motivate particularly high-skilled coders to exert continuous effort after joining a project. Drawing on literature from personnel economics, we lay out how coders’ skill level affects their selection for a focal project in the first place. In turn, we theorize how project-specific norms and quality aspirations that developers learn about after joining an OSS project represent treatments that varyingly entice developers to contribute more code conditional on their skill level. Based on a custom-tailored dataset merging GitHub and Stack Overflow data for almost 50,000 contributor-project-month observations, we find that repository owners are able to motivate their most talented volunteer contributors when they (1) show no visible commercial orientation while managing their projects, (2) show generosity in accepting external contributions, and (3) provide fast feedback. We discuss implications for research and practice in the fields of community-based organizations like OSS as well as personnel economics.

Organisation(s)

Department of Accounting, Innovation and Strategy

External organisation(s)

University of Michigan, Technische Universität München

Journal

Research policy

Volume

51

ISSN

0048-7333

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104368

Publication date

01-2022

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

502052 Business administration

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Management of Technology and Innovation, Strategy and Management, Management Science and Operations Research

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/91709c7e-cf1f-4141-8f1b-4a8eb6f6f328