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Stars matter: how FLOSS developers' reputation affects the attraction of new developers

Published: 29 May 2014 Publication History

Abstract

The attraction of new developers is a key challenge for initiatives developing Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). While previous evaluations consider status gains and competence evaluations to be key drivers for novices' joining behavior, it is unclear how FLOSS developers' relationships with others affect the attraction of new developers. In this research, we look at FLOSS developers' relationships in terms of positive evaluations given by others. Using this perspective, we examine how FLOSS developers' reputation among members within and beyond the project community affects their projects' ability to attract new developers. We draw on Social Resource Theory (SRT) and hypothesize that developers with a high reputation among others enjoy high visibility and credibility, which in turn helps their projects to attract new members. Finally, we propose an evaluation approach for our research model that examines the reputation and project behavior of more than 1,000 FLOSS developers on a longitudinal base.

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  • (2022)A case study of implicit mentoring, its prevalence, and impact in ApacheProceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3549167(797-809)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
  • (2020)A theory of the engagement in open source projects via summer of code programsProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409724(421-431)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGSIM-CPR '14: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM conference on Computers and people research
    May 2014
    204 pages
    ISBN:9781450326254
    DOI:10.1145/2599990
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Published: 29 May 2014

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    Author Tags

    1. attraction
    2. free libre open source software
    3. open source software development
    4. reputation
    5. social resource theory

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    SIGSIM-CPR '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 35 submissions, 74%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 300 of 480 submissions, 63%

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    View all
    • (2022)A case study of implicit mentoring, its prevalence, and impact in ApacheProceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3549167(797-809)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
    • (2020)A theory of the engagement in open source projects via summer of code programsProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409724(421-431)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020

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