%0 Journal Article %J Journal of the Association for Information Systems %D 2010 %T Sustainability of Open-Source Projects: A Longitudinal Study %A Chengular-Smith, I. %A Sidorova, Anna %A Daniel, Sherae L. %K contribution %K developers %K sourceforge %K sustainability %X This paper examines the factors that influence the long-term sustainability of FLOSS projects. A model of project sustainability based on organizational ecology is developed and tested empirically. Data about activity and contribution patterns over the course of five years for 2,772 projects registered with SourceForge is analyzed. Our results suggest that the size of the project’s development base, project age and the size of niche occupied by the project are positively related to the project’s ability to attract user and/or developer resources. The ability to attract resources is an indicator of the perceived project legitimacy, which in turn is a strong predictor of the project’s future sustainability. Thus a project’s ability to attract developer and user resources is shown to play a mediating role between the demographic (size and age) and ecological (niche) characteristics of the project and its future sustainability. Our results support the applicability of tenets of organizational ecology related to the liability of smallness, the liability of newness, and population characteristics (niche size) to the FLOSS development environment. The implications of the results for future research and practice are discussed. %B Journal of the Association for Information Systems %V 11 %U http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol11/iss11/5/ %N 11 %0 Conference Paper %B 2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2009) %D 2009 %T An Exploratory Study on the Two New Trends in Open Source Software: End-Users and Service %A Namjoo Choi %A Chengular-Smith, I. %K developers %K intended audiences %K sourceforge %X Many have been envisaging the emergence of Open Source Software (OSS) for general end-users and the enhancements in providing services and support, as the most critical factors for OSS success, and at the same time, the most critical issues which are holding back the OSS movement. While these two distinct waves in OSS evolution have become more observable, researchers have not yet explored the characteristics of these two distinct new waves. The current study found evidence for these two waves and further explored the two waves by empirically examining two hundred projects hosted in Sourceforge.net. We compared the characteristics of OSS projects that are intended for two disparate audiences: developers and end-users and found that projects for end-users supported more languages but also had more restrictive licenses as compared to projects for developers. %B 2009 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2009) %I IEEE %C Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA %P 1 - 10 %@ 978-0-7695-3450-3 %R 10.1109/HICSS.2009.63 %> https://flosshub.org/sites/flosshub.org/files/07-07-05.pdf