The Impact of Process Effectiveness on User Interest in Contributing to the Open Source Software Projects

Abstract

Unlike closed source software development, open source software (OSS) projects are not commonly driven by direct profit and do not offer developers monetary incentives. Instead, OSS development relies on volunteer developers and voluntary contributions from the user community. Thus, attracting voluntary user contributions to OSS projects is a challenging task. Defect fixing is one important area of OSS development that requires user contributions. Postulating upon the theory of competency rallying, this research examines the impact of the defect-fixing effectiveness on user interest in contributing to OSS projects. Analysis of data collected from 1481 OSS projects confirms that the effectiveness of the defect fixing process till any period of time has a positive significant effect on the user contribution in terms of defect submission as well as defect resolution in the following time period. The results of this study have several implications for OSS projects' managers as well as corporations interested in adopting OSS software.