Abstract
This paper furthers inquiry into the social structure of free and open source software (FLOSS) teams by undertaking social network analysis across time. Contrary to expectations, we confirmed earlier findings of a wide distribution of centralizations even when examining the networks over time. The paper also provides empirical evidence that while change at the center of FLOSS projects is relatively uncommon, participation across the project communities is highly skewed, with many participants appearing for only one period. Surprisingly, large project teams are not more likely to undergo change at their centers.
Acknowledgement: This research was partially supported by NSF Grants 03-41475, 04-14468 and 05-27457. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation
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Howison, J., Inoue, K., Crowston, K. (2006). Social dynamics of free and open source team communications. In: Damiani, E., Fitzgerald, B., Scacchi, W., Scotto, M., Succi, G. (eds) Open Source Systems. OSS 2006. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol 203. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34226-5_32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-34226-5_32
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