Material to inform the decisions on the job promotion of open source software (OSS) developers is available on platforms. Digital features increase the visibility of OSS developer technical and interpersonal skills. Digital features also make it possible for OSS developers to visibly receive endorsements and recommendations from others about those skills. It is unclear how well the visibility of technical versus interpersonal skills through such digital features facilitates OSS developer job promotions. Leveraging Turner's contest-sponsored mobility framework [66], we theorize and empirically examine these concerns using a sample of 269 OSS developers. We find that a developer making their technical skills visible on digital platforms is associated with job promotions. In contrast, the visibility of interpersonal skills through recommendations affects job promotions. Our findings contribute to theory and practice by providing a lens to understand the differential effects of technical versus interpersonal skill visibility offered by different digital features and their effect on OSS developer job promotions.

Despite the widespread adoption of open source software (OSS), its sustainability remains a critical concern, particularly in light of security vulnerabilities and the often inadequate end-of-service (EoS) processes for OSS projects as they decline. Existing models of OSS community participation, like the Onion model and the episodic contribution model, offer valuable insights but are fundamentally incompatible and fail to provide a comprehensive picture of contributor engagement with OSS projects. This paper addresses these gaps by proposing the CROSS model, a novel contributor-project interaction lifecycle model for open source, which delineates the various lifecycle stages of contributor-project interaction, along with the driving and retaining forces pertinent to each stage. By synthesizing existing research on OSS communities, organizational behavior, and human resource development, it explains a range of archetypal cases of contributor engagement and highlights research gaps, especially in EoS/offboarding scenarios. The CROSS model provides a foundation for understanding and enhancing the sustainability of OSS projects, offering a robust foundation for future research and practical application.

Software development work often requires a developer to simultaneously engage two organizations. Outsourcing, consulting, and open-source software (OSS) development exemplify such situations. These work arrangements involve challenges and benefits, particularly for developers' attachment to organizations. We synthesize job embeddedness theory with the concept of symbolic capital to understand how a developer's engagement with two organizations influences the developer's relationship with their primary employer and their movement between employers. We test our model with two studies using survey and archival data from 608 developers. We find developer embeddedness in an OSS community increases turnover from their employer and increases job mobility. Further, our results show symbolic capital (via knowledge and social standing) links OSS embeddedness to job mobility.

Contemporary information systems research, often dominated by Western perspectives, mirrors colonial power dynamics. The call for decolonization emphasizes the need for diverse research methodologies. This minitrack presents research on decolonization, emphasizing decolonial viewpoints using local epistemologies, Indigenous theories and methodologies. It provides insights to information systems researchers on how decolonial approaches to technology and society can aid in combating oppression and fostering a more diverse and inclusive society.

One opportunity for organizations to participate in open source software (OSS) development is through organizations OSS (orgsOSS), a term we use to describe a group of organizations that commit resources to collectively develop OSS. This archetype of OSS development is distinct from other types that include organizations, yet is understudied. As organizations increasingly contribute to and rely on OSS as part of their strategy, understanding how they can collaborate to build software holds importance for the future of software development. This study collects a unique dataset of development tasks from a large orgsOSS project spanning over two years and seven releases. Building on existing OSS research, we explore norms with respect to collaboration, i.e., how developers assign, discuss, and complete tasks, in an orgsOSS project. Interestingly, our analysis reveals that developers in orgsOSS do not always adhere to ideals of widespread sharing and participation espoused by traditional OSS, however some developer and task characteristics helped foster these ideals. Based on these and other findings, we develop a set of propositions and associated collaboration mechanisms that are important to future orgsOSS and other similarly structured software development projects.

Online volunteer work such as moderating forums and participating in open source projects not only underpins today's digital infrastructures, but also helps companies generate immense profits. However, there remains a lack of ethical norms around using volunteer labor for corporate interests, opening opportunities for unchecked extraction of online volunteer work at scale. Early evidence suggests that the extraction of online volunteer work may have negative implications on the tech ecosystem and obfuscate the potential for exploitative labor practices. In this workshop, we invite participants to discuss 1) what ethical tensions exist in the current approaches to extracting online volunteer work, 2) what ethical norms should be followed or recommended and 3) what are the opportunities for social computing technologies to promote these norms. Furthermore, we open a dialogue around whether online platforms should be providing non-monetary compensation, such as education and resources, that is often promised in in-person volunteer settings. We plan to involve a diversity of roles beyond academic researchers, such as online volunteers and practitioners to discuss these questions.

The success of open source software (OSS) projects depends on sustained contributions by developers who often display a wide variety of contribution patterns. Project leaders and stakeholders would strongly prefer that developers not only maintain but preferably increase their contributions over time as they gain experience. Corporations increasingly complement OSS developer motivations (such as fit in terms of shared values with the project community) by paying them to sustain contributions. However, practitioners argue whether payment helps or hurts projects because monetary compensation may dampen developer motivation in the long run, making it difficult for project leaders to understand what to expect from developers over time. Using Herzberg motivation-hygiene framework, we explore how developer perceptions of value fit with the project and being paid interact to determine the level of code contribution and its rate of change over time (i.e., growth). Using a survey of 564 developers across 431 projects on GitHub, we build a three-level growth model explaining the code contribution and its growth over a six-month period. We find that value fit with the project positively influences both the level and growth of code contribution. However, there are notable differences among paid and unpaid developers in the impact of value fit on their level and growth in code contributions over time. The implications of our work will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and organizations investing in open source projects.

Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) developers often make a single contribution to a project and then no more, making project management difficult. To improve understanding around why developers leave, this work explores the relationship between FLOSS developer motivations and their attitudes and behavior related to projects. In particular, we add insight to the current understanding of these issues by proposing single- and double-loop learning as intervening mechanisms that connect developer motivations to outcomes and thereby help clarify when developer motivations have negative and positive impacts for the project. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 132 FLOSS developers. We find that intrinsic motivations (motivation to learn) and social motivations (motivation to collaborate) positively influence single- and double-loop learning while extrinsic motivations negatively impact both types of learning. We further find that single- and double-loop learning have differential impacts on contribution to the focal project and other projects. While single-loop learning is associated with lower turnover intentions, double-loop learning is associated with higher turnover intentions. Implications of our findings for research and management are provided in the discussion.

Online peer production communities such as open source software (OSS) projects attract both identified and anonymous peripheral contributions (APC) (e.g., defect reports, feature requests, or forum posts). While we can attribute identified peripheral contributions (IPC) to specific individuals and OSS projects need them to succeed, one cannot trace back anonymous peripheral contributions (APC), and they can have both positive and negative ramifications for project development. Open platforms and managers face a challenging design choice in deciding whether to allow APC and for which tasks or what type of projects. We examine the impact that the ratio between APC and IPC has on OSS project performance. Our results suggest that the OSS projects perform the best when they contain a uniform anonymity level (i.e., they contain predominantly APC or predominantly IPC). However, our results also suggest that OSS projects have lower performance when the ratio between APC and IPC nears one (i.e., they contain close to the same number of APC and IPC). Furthermore, our results suggest that these results differ depending on the type of application that a project develops. Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about the implications of anonymity for online communities and informs managers about the effect that anonymous contributions have on their projects.

Reviews drive online sales. In a perfect world, reviews represent a way to make the market contain less friction. That is, they accurately estimate the value of products without bias from the person writing the review. However, some suggest that factors that do not represent the quality of the product alter the relationship between the review and the sale. We use Tajfel and Turner (1986)'s social categorization theory to develop a model that predicts the sentiment of the review left by a guest. We test our hypotheses using archival data about interactions on AirBnB. We find that when the host and the guest share the same ethnicity with positive stereotypes, the review is more positive. However, if the host and the guest share an ethnicity with negative stereotypes, the review is more negative. The discussion section reflects on these results with respect to theory and offers practical implications.

Open source software (OSS) communities are dependent on the code contributions of developers who, in many cases, never meet face-to-face and collaborate primarily through technology-enabled means. With their fluid membership, such communities often rely on engaging the commitment of developers to their cause. Given the changing nature of OSS communities, developers face barriers in appreciating appropriate ways of contributing to the collaborative effort. Such uncertainty about how to contribute results in OSS communities losing developers as they devote their attention to other, more welcoming, communities. In this research, we draw upon uncertainty reduction theory to argue that developers have two alternative avenues at their disposal to gain certainty about how to contribute: passive and interactive. Leveraging the person–environment fit perspective, we argue that congruence and incongruence in the OSS values of a developer and an OSS community serve as an avenue for passive approaches to gaining certainty, to the degree that appropriate ways of contributing are encoded in these values. Further, leveraging social network theory, we argue that centrality within a community’s communication network constitutes an avenue for interactive approaches for gaining certainty about how to contribute. Using polynomial regression analysis, we analyze survey and archival data from 410 developers in an OSS community. Results suggest that developer centrality moderates the impact of congruence and incongruence in OSS values on commitment. Moreover, commitment fully mediates the impact of OSS value congruence and incongruence on developer contribution activity. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice.

Corporate involvement in open source software (OSS) communities has increased substantially in recent years. Often this takes the form of company employees devoting their time to contribute code to the efforts of projects in these communities. Ideology has traditionally served to motivate, coordinate, and guide volunteer contributions to OSS communities. As employees represent an increasing proportion of the participants in OSS communities, the role of OSS ideology in guiding their commitment and code contributions is unknown. In this research, we argue that OSS ideology misfit has important implications for companies and the OSS communities to which their employees contribute, since their engagement in such communities is not necessarily voluntary. We conceptualize two different types of misfit: OSS ideology under-fit, whereby an employee embraces an OSS ideology more than their coworkers or OSS community do, and OSS ideology over-fit, whereby an employee perceives that their coworkers or OSS community embrace the OSS ideology more strongly than the employee does. To develop a set of hypotheses about the implications of these two types of misfit for employee commitment to the company and commitment to the OSS community, we draw on self-determination theory. We test the hypotheses in a field study of 186 employees who participate in an OSS community. We find that OSS ideology under-fit impacts the company and the community in the same way: it decreases employee commitment to the company and commitment to the OSS community. In contrast, we find that OSS ideology over-fit increases commitment to the company but decreases commitment to the OSS community. Finally, we find that employees’ commitment to their company reinforces the impact of their commitment to the OSS community in driving ongoing code contributions. This provides a holistic view of OSS ideology and its impacts among an increasingly pervasive yet understudied type of participant in OSS research. It provides insights for companies that are considering assigning their employees to work in OSS communities as well as for OSS communities that are partnering with these companies.