Retention and Quality in Open Source Software Projects
Vishal Midha, Prashant Palvia · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2007
Open source software (OSS) is a rapidly developing phenomenon and is finding an increasing use worldwide.In spite of its attractiveness and advantages, issues related to the quality of the software and retention of developers persists.In this study, we identify two key antecedents: complexity and modularity of the software and investigate their effects on software quality and developer retention.We found that both the higher modularity translates into higher developer retention and lesser time to fix bugs; and complexity translates into lower developer retention and more time to fix bugs.In total, four of the six proposed hypotheses are supported by our research.