The More the Merrier? The Effect of Size of Core Team Subgroups on Success of Open Source Projects

Open source software (OSS) has become an important organizational form of building software. Given the desire to understand drivers of OSS project success and the known importance of social structure for team functioning, we investigate the effects of the relative size of contribution-based subgroups on community size of OSS projects. Drawing on extant research on OSS and faultline-based subgrouping, we investigate the relation with project community size of the relative size of subgroups based on reputation, issue focus, contribution extent and contribution persistence. While in several instances non-significant, results suggest a differential relation in which a large share of core members with high reputation, issue focus and persistent contributions positively relate to community size, whereas a large share of extensively contributing members in the core team is negatively related. Our findings are of value to research and practice by furthering the understanding of work in OSS projects.      «

Open source software (OSS) has become an important organizational form of building software. Given the desire to understand drivers of OSS project success and the known importance of social structure for team functioning, we investigate the effects of the relative size of contribution-based subgroups on community size of OSS projects. Drawing on extant research on OSS and faultline-based subgrouping, we investigate the relation with project community size of the relative size of subgroups based...     »