Developer Management in FLOSS Projects - Theoretical Concepts and Empirical Evidence
Andreas Schilling · 2015
This dissertation derives new ways and methods on how to integrate and bind developers in Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. It examines how sustainable commitment of new contributors can be identified at an early stage, how developers’ geographic dispersion affects their collaboration productivity, if the presence of reputable developers increases teamwork productivity and if mentoring is an appropriate means to bind developers in FLOSS projects. To address these research questions, the thesis builds on established theories and concepts from organizational and social science such as Person-Job (P-J) and Person-Team (P-T) fit, the social practice view and self-determination theory. The results of the performed empirical evaluations suggest that: (i) the derived criteria for P-J and P-T fit are suitable to identify sustained commitment early on, (ii) developers’ offline relationships determine if their spatial and cultural distance becomes a gain or a burden for their collaboration, (iii) the presence of reputable developers increases productivity in FLOSS projects only marginally, (iv) mentoring is an appropriate means to bind developers in FLOSS projects