Continued Voluntary Participation Intention in Firm-Participating Open Source Software Projects

Abstract

Firm participation in open source software (OSS) development is a noteworthy phenomenon and includes two types of firm-participating OSS projects: community founded (developed from an open project) and spinout (spun out from an information technology firm's internal project). OSS project leaders implement quality controls to improve the quality of developed products. They may not be aware that their implementation of quality controls produces a side effect-quality controls signal unobservable project quality to volunteers and promote volunteers' continued participation intentions (VCPI).We focus on two quality controls-accreditation and code acceptance, which, respectively, map to the input and output quality of an OSS project-and compare their respective effects on VCPI in community-founded and spinout projects.We propose that accreditation and code acceptance influence VCPI by signaling unobservable input and output quality to volunteers. As we focus on continued participation, we theorize as to how volunteers' tenure in OSS projects moderates the relationships between the signaling effects of input and output quality controls and VCPI. Furthermore, we theorize as to how the OSS project type moderates the effects of quality controls on VCPI. We surveyed 304 volunteers from 40 OSS projects and constructed a two-level model of project and developer factors to explain VCPI. Our findings indicate that both accreditation and code acceptance enhance VCPI. The signaling effects on VCPI associated with accreditation decline with volunteer tenure, but those associated with code acceptance do not. Accreditation and code acceptance influence VCPI, with community-founded projects exhibitingweaker direct positive effects and spinout projects exhibiting stronger direct positive effects. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.