Beyond Development

Open source software has rapidly become a popular area of study within the information systems research community. Most of the research conducted so far has focused on the phenomenon of open source software development, rather than use. We argue for the importance of studying open source software use and propose a framework to guide research in this area. The framework describes four main areas of investigation: the creation of OSS user communities, their characteristics, their contributions and how they change. For each area of the framework, we suggest several research questions that deserve attention.

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Beyond Development

Advances in Information Resources Management - Best Practices and Conceptual Innovations in Information Resources Management ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-128-5.ch018 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 302-314

Author(s):

Leigh Jin ◽

Daniel Robey ◽

Marie-Claude Boudreau

Keyword(s):

Information Systems ◽

Software Development ◽

Open Source ◽

Open Source Software ◽

Research Community ◽

Open Source Software Development ◽

Systems Research ◽

Information Systems Research ◽

User Communities ◽

Research Questions

Open source software has rapidly become a popular area of study within the information systems research community. Most of the research conducted so far has focused on the phenomenon of open source software development, rather than use. We argue for the importance of studying open source software use and propose a framework to guide research in this area. The framework describes four main areas of investigation: the creation of OSS user communities, their characteristics, their contributions and how they change. For each area of the framework, we suggest several research questions that deserve attention.

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Information systems success in free and open source software development: theory and measures

Software Process Improvement and Practice ◽

10.1002/spip.259 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 123-148 ◽

Cited By ~ 149

Author(s):

Kevin Crowston ◽

James Howison ◽

Hala Annabi

Keyword(s):

Information Systems ◽

Software Development ◽

Open Source ◽

Open Source Software ◽

Development Theory ◽

Information Systems Success ◽

Open Source Software Development

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Developing Theory and Methods to Understand and Improve Collaboration in Open Source Software Development on GitHub

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting ◽

10.1177/1541931218621256 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 62 (1) ◽

pp. 1118-1122 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Olivia B. Newton ◽

Stephen M. Fiore ◽

Jihye Song

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

Open Source ◽

Open Source Software ◽

Cognitive Engineering ◽

Open Source Software Development ◽

Asynchronous Collaboration ◽

Social Media Platforms ◽

Research Questions ◽

Technical Features ◽

Organizational Needs

As a result of fundamental changes in organizational needs and practices, social coding, a facet of modern collaboration, has become a prevalent phenomenon in software development. While the adoption of social media platforms for social coding, like GitHub, has enabled distributed, asynchronous collaboration among software developers, the structure of such platforms introduces a novel set of socio-technical challenges that cognitive engineering is uniquely qualified to address. Towards this end, we examine GitHub’s social and technical features as a means for both improving and hindering coordination and problem solving in software development. Through an integration of existing theories from the organizational sciences with recent research in social coding, we offer a set of preliminary research questions aimed at improving understanding of open source software development.

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