@conference {622,
	title = {Emergent Decision-Making Practices in Free/Libre Open Source Software (Floss) Development Teams},
	booktitle = {OSS2007: Open Source Development, Adoption and Innovation (IFIP 2.13)},
	series = {IFIP International Federation for Information Processing },
	volume = {234/2007},
	year = {2007},
	month = {2007///},
	pages = {71 - 84},
	publisher = {Springer},
	organization = {Springer},
	chapter = {6},
	abstract = {We seek to identify work practices that make Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams effective. Particularly important to team effectiveness is decision making. In this paper, we report on an inductive qualitative analysis of 360 decision episodes of six FLOSS development teams. Our analysis revealed diversity in decision-making practices that seem to be related to differences in overall team characteristics and effectiveness.
},
	issn = {978-0-387-72485-0},
	doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72486-7_6},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/Emergent\%20Decision-Making.pdf},
	author = {Robert Heckman and Kevin Crowston and Eseryel, U. and Howison, James and Eileen Allen and Li, Qing}
}
@article {flosswp405,
	title = {Self-organization of teams for free/libre open source software development},
	journal = {Information and Software Technology Journal},
	volume = {49},
	number = {564-575},
	year = {2007},
	note = {"First, the data from these projects that we needed for analysis had to be publicly available (ruling out projects that limit access to their email lists or trackers). Second, we chose the projects that had more than 7 members"..."projects that have attracted numerous developers beyond the initial project founders, are continuing to release software, have numerous downloads and have an active user community that provides feedback"
"3 FLOSS projects were selected for analysis, namely Gaim, eGroupWare and Compiere ERP."

all had sourceforge hosting

Data: "The primary data used for our study were interactions on the main developer communication forum, either a developer mailing list or web-based discussion forum."

Analysis: "For this project, we inductively content-analyzed developer email interactions to identify the task assignment mechanisms used in the process. We coded each instance of task assignment identified on three dimensions: who assigned the task, to whom, and how"
},
	abstract = {This paper provides empirical evidence about how free/libre open source software development teams self-organize their work. Following a case study methodology, we examined developer interaction data from three active and successful FLOSS projects using qualitative research methods, specifically inductive content analysis, to identify the task-assignment mechanisms used by the participants. We found that "self-assignment" was the most common mechanism across three FLOSS projects. This mechanism is consistent with expectations for distributed and largely volunteer teams. We conclude by discussing whether these emergent practices can be usefully transferred to mainstream practice and indicating directions for future research.},
	keywords = {case study, compiere, coordination, DESIGN, distributed teams, egroupware, email, email archives, forum, free/libre open source software development, gaim, INTERNET, mailing list, metadata, qualitative research methods, self-organizing teams, sourceforge, SYSTEMS, task assignment, WORK},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/task_assignment_final.pdf},
	author = {Kevin Crowston and Li, Qing and Kangning Wei and Eseryel, U. Yeliz and Howison, James}
}
@article {90,
	title = {Core and periphery in Free/Libre and Open Source software team communications},
	journal = {Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 06},
	year = {2006},
	abstract = {The concept of the core group of developers is important and often discussed in empirical studies of FLOSS projects. This paper examines the question, "how does one empirically distinguish the core?" Being able to identify the core members of a FLOSS development project is important because many of the processes necessary for successful projects likely involve core members differently than peripheral members, so analyses that mix the two groups will likely yield invalid results. 

We compare 3 analysis approaches to identify the core: the named list of developers, a Bradford{\textquoteright}s law analysis that takes as the core the most frequent contributors and a social network analysis of the interaction pattern that identifies the core in a core-and-periphery structure. We apply these measures to the interactions around bug fixing for 116 SourceForge projects. The 3 techniques identify different individuals as core members; examination of which individuals are identified leads to suggestions for refining the measures. All 3 measures though suggest that the core of FLOSS projects is a small fraction of the total number of contributors.},
	keywords = {bug fixing, contributions, contributors, core, developers, social network analysis, sourceforge, team},
	author = {Kevin Crowston and Kangning Wei and Li, Qing and Howison, James}
}
@proceedings {89,
	title = {Coordination of Free/Libre Open Source Software development},
	year = {2005},
	note = {"The data used for the study were interactions on the main developer communication venue, either a developer mailing list or online forum"
sourceforge
},
	address = {Las Vegas, NV, USA},
	abstract = {The apparent success of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) development projects such as Linux, Apache, and many others has raised the question, what lessons from FLOSS development can be transferred to mainstream software development? In this paper, we use coordination theory to analyze coordination mechanisms in FLOSS development and compare our analysis with existing literature on coordination in proprietary software development. We examined developer interaction data from three active and successful FLOSS projects and used content analysis to identify the coordination mechanisms used by the participants. We found that there were similarities between the FLOSS groups and the reported practices of the proprietary project in the coordination mechanisms used to manage task-task dependencies. However, we found clear differences in the coordination mechanisms used to manage task-actor dependencies. While published descriptions of proprietary software development involved an elaborate system to locate the developer who owned the relevant piece of code, we found that {\textquotedblleft}self-assignment{\textquotedblright} was the most common mechanism across three FLOSS projects. This coordination mechanism is consistent with expectations for distributed and largely volunteer teams. We conclude by discussing whether these emergent practices can be usefully transferred to mainstream practice and indicating directions for future research.},
	keywords = {case study, compiere, coordination, egroupware, email, email archives, FLOSS, gaim, mailing list},
	attachments = {https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/CrowstonWeiLiEseryelHowison.pdf},
	author = {Kevin Crowston and Kangning Wei and Li, Qing and Eseryel, U. Yeliz and Howison, James}
}
