TY - JOUR T1 - Participation in Community-Based Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Tasks: The Impact of Task Characteristics JF - Internet Research Y1 - 2021 A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Kevin Crowston AB -

Prior research on participation in FLOSS development has focused mainly on factors at the individual and/or project levels. In this research, we focus on task characteristics and explore their impacts on participation in FLOSS development tasks. Analyzing tasks from five projects in two categories, we find differences in participation related to different task triggers and task topics. Further, our results suggest the mediating role of number of participants in the relationship between task characteristics and the number of messages and the moderating role of project type in the relationships between task characteristics and the number of participants.

VL - 31 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Decision-Making Processes in Community-based Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Teams with Internal Governance: An Extension to Decision-Making Theory JF - Communications of the Association for Information Systems Y1 - 2020 A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Kevin Crowston AB -

FLOSS teams are an extreme example of distributed teams, prominent in software development. At the core of distributed team success is team decision-making and execution. The lack formal organizational structures to guide practices and the reliance on asynchronous communication might be expected to make decision making problematic. While there is a paucity of research in how organizations make IS development decisions, the research in FLOSS decision making models is limited. Decision-making literature in FLOSS teams is limited to the investigation of the distribution of decision-making power. Therefore, it is not clear which decision-making theories fit FLOSS context best, or whether novel decision-making models are required. Despite these challenges many FLOSS teams are effective. We adopted a process-based perspective to analyze decision-making in five community-based FLOSS teams. We identified five different decision-making processes, indicating FLOSS teams use multiple processes when making decisions. Decision-making behaviors were stable across projects despite different type of knowledge required. We help fill in the literature gap due to the lack of investigations the extent to which FLOSS decision mechanisms can be explained using classical decision-making theories. Practically, community and company leaders should use these decision processes to infrastructure that fits best with the FLOSS decision-making processes.

IS - 46 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Roles and politeness behavior in community-based Free/Libre Open Source Software development JF - Information and Management Y1 - 2017 A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Heckman, Robert KW - Core-periphery structure KW - Open source software development KW - Politeness behavior AB - Community-based Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development relies on contributions from both core and peripheral members. Prior research on core-periphery has focused on software coding-related behaviors. We study how core-periphery roles are related to social-relational behavior in terms of politeness behavior. Data from two FLOSS projects suggest that both core and peripheral members use more positive politeness strategies than negative strategies. Further, core and peripheral members use different strategies to protect positive face in positive politeness, which we term respect and intimacy respectively. Our results contribute to FLOSS research and politeness theory. VL - 54 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Group maintenance in technology-supported distributed teams JF - Information & Management Y1 - 2014 A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Li, Na A1 - Heckman, Robert AB - In this paper we investigate group maintenance behavior in community-based Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams. Adopting a sociolinguistic perspective, we conceptualize group maintenance behavior as interpersonal communication tactics—specifically, social presence and politeness tactics—that help maintain relationships among group members. Developer email messages were collected from two FLOSS projects with different development status and content-analyzed to identify frequently-used group maintenance tactics. We then compared the two projects on the group maintenance tactics used, finding differences that reflect changes in the project work practices. Our work contributes theoretically to FLOSS research and has practical implications for FLOSS practitioners. VL - 51 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Free/Libre Open Source Software Development: What we know and what we do not know JF - ACM Computing Surveys Y1 - 2012 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - James Howison A1 - Wiggins, Andrea AB - We review the empirical research on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) development and assess the state of the literature. We develop a framework for organizing the literature based on the input-mediator-output- input (IMOI) model from the small groups literature. We present a quantitative summary of articles selected for the review and then discuss findings of this literature categorized into issues pertaining to inputs (e.g., member characteristics, technology use and project characteristics), processes (software development and social processes), emergent states (e.g., trust and task related states) and outputs (e.g. team performance, FLOSS implementation and project evolution). Based on this review, we suggest topics for future research, as well as identifying methodological and theoretical issues for future inquiry in this area, including issues relating to sampling and the need for more longitudinal studies. VL - 44 ER - TY - CONF T1 - The impact of national culture on knowledge sharing in global virtual collaboration T2 - Proceedings of International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) Y1 - 2010 A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Kevin Crowston KW - Knowledge Sharing KW - National Culture KW - Virtuality JF - Proceedings of International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) CY - St. Louis, MO, USA ER - TY - Generic T1 - Investigating the Dynamics of FLOSS Development Teams (Poster) Y1 - 2007 A1 - Li, Na A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Heckman, Robert A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Liddy, Elizabeth D. A1 - James Howison A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Allen, Eileen E. A1 - Scialdone, Michael J. A1 - Inoue, Keisuke A1 - Harwell, Sarah A1 - Rowe, Steven A1 - McCracken, Nancy A1 - Wiggins, Andrea N1 - SD 2007 poster - Full Adobe PDF 2007 HSD PI's conference poster reporting on the grant project work to date in a full Adobe PDF file. HSD 2007 poster - Small PDF HSD 2007 conference grant progress reporting poster in a smaller PDF file. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Self-organization of teams in free/libre open source software development JF - Information and Software Technology Journal: Special issue on Understanding the Social Side of Software Engineering, Qualitative Software Engineering Research Y1 - 2007 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - James Howison AB - This paper provides empirical evidence about how free/libre open source software development teams self-organize their work, specifically, how tasks are assigned to project team members. 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. VL - 49 IS - 6 ER - TY - Generic T1 - Core and periphery in Free/Libre and Open Source software team communications T2 - Proceedings of the 39th Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39) Y1 - 2006 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Li, Qing A1 - James Howison KW - FLOSS AB - 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’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. JF - Proceedings of the 39th Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39) CY - Kaua'i, Hawai'i, January ER - TY - Generic T1 - Emergent decision-making practices in technology-supported self-organizing distributed teams T2 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) Y1 - 2006 A1 - Heckman, Robert A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Allen, Eileen E. A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - James Howison A1 - Kangning Wei KW - Decision-Making KW - FLOSS AB - We seek to identify work practices that make technology-supported self-organizing distributed (or virtual) teams (TSSODT for short) effective in producing outputs satisfactory to their sponsors, meeting the needs of their members and continuing to function. A particularly important practice for team effectiveness is decision making: are the right decisions made at the right time to get the work done in a way that satisfies team sponsors, keeps contributors happy and engaged, and enables continued team success? In this research-in-progress paper, we report on an inductive qualitative analysis of 120 decision episodes taken by 2 Free/libre Open Source Software development teams. Our analysis revealed differences in decision-making practices that seem to be related to differences in overall team effectiveness. JF - Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) CY - Milwaukee, WI, 10–13 Dec ER - TY - Generic T1 - Investigating the Dynamics of FLOSS Development Teams (Poster) Y1 - 2006 A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Heckman, Robert A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - Liddy, Elizabeth D. A1 - James Howison A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Allen, Eileen E. A1 - Inoue, Keisuke A1 - Harwell, Sarah A1 - Rowe, Steven A1 - McCracken, Nancy N1 - Poster describing the current state of the project for the HSD Principal Investigators' conference, 14-15 September 2006, Washington DC. ER - TY - Generic T1 - Coordination of Free/Libre Open Source Software development T2 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) Y1 - 2005 A1 - Kevin Crowston A1 - Kangning Wei A1 - Li, Qing A1 - Eseryel, U. Yeliz A1 - James Howison KW - Coordination KW - FLOSS AB - 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 “self-assignment” 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. JF - Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) CY - Las Vegas, NV, USA, December ER -