Open Source Software Projects as Virtual Organizations: Competency Rallying for Software Development

TitleOpen Source Software Projects as Virtual Organizations: Competency Rallying for Software Development
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2002
AuthorsCrowston, K, Scozzi, B
Secondary TitleIEE Proceedings Software
Volume149
Number1
Pagination3–17
Keywordscompetencies, competency rallying, coordination, project success, sourceforge, virtual organizations
Abstract

The contribution of this paper is the identification and testing of factors important for the success of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. We present an analysis of OSS communities as virtual organizations and apply Katzy and Crowston's (2000) competency rallying (CR) theory to the case of OSS development projects. CR theory suggests that project participants must develop necessary competencies, identify and understand market opportunities, marshal competencies to meet the opportunity and manage a short-term cooperative process. Using data collected from 7477 OSS projects hosted by the SourceForge system (http://sourceforge.net/), we formulate and test a set of specific hypotheses derived from CR theory.

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