Abstract
Social networks in Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) have been usually analyzed at the level of the single project e.g., [6], or at the level of a whole ecology of projects, e.g., [33]. In this paper, we also investigate the social network generated by developers who collaborate to one or multiple F/OSS projects, but we focus on the less-studied meso-level structure emerging when applying to this network a community-detection technique. The network of ‘communities’ emerging from this analysis links sub-groups of densely connected developers, sub-groups that are smaller than the components of the network but larger than the teams working on single projects. Our results reveal the complexity of this meso-level structure, where several dense sub-groups of developers are connected by sparse collaboration among different sub-groups. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings with reference to the wider literature on collaboration networks and potential for innovation. We argue that the observed empirical meso-structure in F/OSS collaboration network resembles that associated to the highest levels of innovativeness.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Albert, R., Barabási, A.-L.: Statistical mechanics of complex networks. Reviews of Modern Physics 74(1), 47–97 (2002)
Barabási, A.L.: Scale-free networks: a decade and beyond. Science 325(5939), 412–413 (2009)
Bird, C., Goey, A., Devanbu, P., Swaminathan, A., Hsu, G.: Open Borders? Immigration in Open Source Projects. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories (2007)
Burt, R.: Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Capiluppi, A., Lago, P., Morisio, M.: Characteristics of Open Source Projects, p. 317 (2003)
Crowston, K., Howison, J.: The social structure of free and open source software development. First Monday 10(2)
Csardi, G., Nepusz, T.: The igraph software package for complex network research. Inter. Journal Complex Systems, 1695 (2006)
Germán, D.M.: The GNOME project: a case study of open source, global software development. Software Process: Improvement and Practice 8(4), 201–215 (2004)
Gilsing, V., Nooteboom, B., Vanhaverbeke, W., Duysters, G., Oord, A.V.D.: Network embeddedness and the exploration of novel technologies: Technological distance, betweenness centrality and density. Research Policy 37(10), 1717–1731 (2008)
González-Barahona, J.M., Robles, G., Andradas-Izquierdo, R., Ghosh, R.A.: Geographic origin of libre software developers. Information Economics and Policy 20(4), 356–363 (2008)
von Hippel, E., von Krogh, G.: Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science. Organization Science 14(2), 209–223 (2003)
Howison, J., Inoue, K., Crowston, K.: Social dynamics of free and open source team communications. In: Damiani, E., Fitzgerald, B., Scacchi, W., Scotto, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the IFIP Second International Conference on Open Source Software (Lake Como, Italy). IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol. 203, pp. 319–330. Springer, Boston (2006)
von Krogh, G., von Hippel, E.: The Promise of Research on Open Source Software. Management Science 52(7), 975–983 (2006)
Laursen, K., Salter, A.: Open for innovation: the role of openness in explaining innovation performance among U.K. manufacturing firms. Strategic Management Journal 27(2), 131–150 (2006)
Lazear, E.P.: Globalisation and the Market for Team-Mates. The Economic Journal 109(454), C15–C40 (1999)
Lerner, J., Tirole, J.: The Scope of Open Source Licensing. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 21(1), 20–56 (2005)
Long, Y., Siau, K.: Social Network Structures in Open Source Software Development Teams. Journal of Database Management 18(2), 25–40 (2007)
López-Fernández, L., Robles, G., González-Barahona, J.M., Herraiz, I.: Applying Social Network Analysis Techniques to Community-driven Libre Software Projects. International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering 1(3), 27–48 (2006)
Madey, G., Freeh, V., Tynan, R.: Modeling the free/open source software community: A quantitative investigation. In: Koch, S. (ed.) Free/Open Source Software Development, pp. 203–220. Idea Group Publishing, USA (2005)
Mayer-Schönberger, V.: Can we reinvent the Internet? Science 325(5939), 396–7 (2009)
Mockus, A., Fielding, R.T., Herbsleb, J.D.: Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla. ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 11(3) (2002)
Moon, J.Y., Sproull, L.S.: Essence of Distributed Work: The Case of the Linux Kernel. First Monday 5(11) (2000)
Newman, M.E.J., Girvan, M.: Finding and evaluating community structure in networks. Physical Review E 69(2), 026113 (2004)
Pons, P., Latapy, M.: Computing Communities in Large Networks Using Random Walks. Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications 10(2), 191–218 (2006)
Robles, G., González-Barahona, J.M.: Developer identification methods for integrated data from various sources. In: Proceedings of the 2005 international workshop on Mining software repositories, vol. 30(4) (2005)
Scacchi, W., Feller, J., Fitzgerald, B., Hissam, S., Lakhani, K.: Understanding Free/Open Source Software Development Processes. Software Process: Improvement and Practice 11(2), 95–105 (2006)
Shah, S.K.: Motivation, Governance, and the Viability of Hybrid Forms in Open Source Software Development. Management Science 52(7), 1000–1014 (2006)
Shaikh, M., Cornford, T.: Version Control Tools: A Collaborative Vehicle for Learning in F/OS. In: Collaboration, Conflict and Control: The 4th Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering 2004, Edimburgh, Scotland (2004)
Van Antwerp, M., Madey, G.: Advances in the SourceForge Research Data Archive (SRDA). Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Open Source Systems, IFIP 2.13, Milan, Italy (September 2008)
Wasserman, S., Faust, K.: Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1994)
Watts, D.J., Strogatz, S.H.: Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks. Nature 393(6684), 440–442 (1998)
Wiggins, A., Howison, J., Crowston, K.: Social Dynamics of FLOSS Team Communication Across Channels. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Open Source Software, Milan, Italy (2008)
Xu, J., Gao, Y., Christley, S., Madey, G.: A Topological Analysis of the Open Souce Software Development Community. In: Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 IFIP
About this paper
Cite this paper
Conaldi, G., Rullani, F. (2010). The Meso-level Structure of F/OSS Collaboration Network: Local Communities and Their Innovativeness. In: Ågerfalk, P., Boldyreff, C., González-Barahona, J.M., Madey, G.R., Noll, J. (eds) Open Source Software: New Horizons. OSS 2010. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 319. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13244-5_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-13243-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-13244-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)