Firm-Sponsored Developers in Open Source Software Projects: A Social Capital Perspective

✍ Scribed by Dirk Homscheid

• Publisher: Springer Gabler
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 251
• Series: Innovation, Entrepreneurship und Digitalisierung
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This research aims at synthesizing literature on social capital theory and OSS communities to arrive at a conceptual model of social capital and individuals' value creation in OSS communities. Accordingly, it targets at replicating prior research that used social capital to predict diverse forms of outcome by using alternative operationalizations of the different social capital dimensions as well as forms of outcome and includes firm-sponsorship as moderator into the models. As a result of this research, it can be noted that the proven relationship between an OSS contributor's social capital and his created value is affected by firm-sponsorship. Furthermore, it could be shown that the proven relationship between an OSS contributor's social capital and associated individual outcomes is not affected by firm-sponsorship.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgment
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation
1.2 Research Question and Dissertation Goal
1.3 Coherence of the Dissertation Studies
1.4 Structure and Outline
2 The Social Capital View
2.1 The Evolution of the Social Capital Concept
2.2 Considering Social Capital Theorists
2.2.1 Pierre Bourdieu
2.2.2 James Samual Coleman
2.2.3 Robert David Putnam
2.2.4 Janine Nahapiet and Sumantra Ghoshal
2.2.5 Nan Lin
2.3 Defining Social Capital
2.4 Social Capital Research Today
2.5 Characteristics of Social Capital compared to other Forms of Capital
2.6 Drawbacks of Social Capital
2.7 Social Capital in the Context of Organizations
2.8 Summary
3 Open Source Software and Firm Involvement
3.1 The Open Source Software Phenomenon
3.1.1 A Comparison of Open Source Software and Proprietary Software
3.1.2 An Outline of the Open Source Movement
3.1.3 The Understanding of Open Source Software at a Glance
3.2 Exposing Open Source Communities and Open Source Software Developers
3.2.1 Introducing Open Source Software Communities
3.2.2 Motivation of Open Source Software Developers
3.2.3 Motivation of Firms to get Involved in Open Source Software Communities
3.3 Business Models related to Open Source Software
3.4 Summary
4 The Linux Kernel Project
4.1 History of and Facts about the Linux Kernel
4.2 Governance of the Linux Kernel and the Linux Kernel Community
4.3 Explaining the Linux Kernel Development Process
4.4 Linux Kernel Project as Research Context
4.5 Summary
5 Collection and Cleanup of Network and Source Code Data
5.1 Linux Kernel Mailing List Data
5.1.1 The Process of Data Crawling
5.1.2 The Process of Data Cleaning
5.1.3 The Process of Contributor Categorization
5.2 Linux Kernel Source Code Data
6 Study I: Private-Collective Innovation and Open Source Software: Longitudinal Insights from Linux Kernel Development
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Theoretical Background
6.2.1 Open Source Software Contributors
6.2.2 Private-Collective Model of Innovation
6.3 Method
6.3.1 Data Collection and Coding of Contributor Categories
6.3.2 Social Network Analysis
6.4 Results
6.4.1 Comparison of In-Degree and Out-Degree
6.4.2 Comparison of Degree per Group
6.4.3 Longitudinal Analysis
6.5 Discussion and Conclusion
6.5.1 Discussion
6.5.2 Conclusion
6.5.3 Implications for Research
6.5.4 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
7 Study II: The Social Capital Effect on Value Contribution—Revealing Differences between Voluntary and Firm-Sponsored Open Source Software Developers
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Theoretical Background
7.2.1 The Concept of Social Capital
7.2.2 Open Source Software Communities
7.3 Hypotheses Development
7.3.1 Relations of Social Capital Dimensions to Each Other
7.3.2 Relations of Social Capital Dimensions to Contribution
7.3.3 Firm-Sponsorship as Moderator
7.4 Research Design
7.4.1 Setup of the Data to be Examined
7.4.2 Operationalization of Variables
7.4.3 Outlier Detection
7.4.4 Validity Consideration
7.5 Results
7.5.1 Descriptive Information about Linux Kernel Mailing List Actors in 2014
7.5.2 Descriptive Information about the Linux Kernel Source Code for 2014 and 2015
7.5.3 Correlations and Regression Results
7.6 Discussion, Conclusion and Implications
7.6.1 Discussion and Conclusion
7.6.2 Implications for Research
7.6.3 Implications for Management
7.6.4 Limitations of the Study
8 Study III: Social Capital and the Formation of Individual Characteristics—An Examination of Open Source Software Developers
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Hypotheses Development
8.3 Research Design
8.3.1 Utilized Constructs and Indicators
8.3.2 Conception and Method of Research
8.3.3 Conduct of the Survey
8.4 Data Analysis
8.4.1 Methods of Data Analysis
8.4.2 Survey Data Preparation
8.5 Results
8.5.1 Descriptive Information about the Linux Kernel Survey Participants
8.5.2 Confirmatory Factor Analysis
8.5.3 Correlations and Regression Results
8.6 Discussion, Conclusion and Implications
8.6.1 Discussion and Conclusion
8.6.2 Implications for Research
8.6.3 Implications for Management
8.6.4 Limitations of the Study
9 Summary, Conclusion and Outlook
9.1 Theoretical and Empirical Contribution
9.2 Implications for Research
9.3 Implications for Management
Bibliography