Towards Evaluating the Robustness of the Open-Source Product Community under Multiple Attack Strategies

Abstract

As an emerging product innovation model, open-source innovation has undergone rapid development in recent years. The sustainability and stability of the open-source product community (OSPC) is crucial for product innovation, and the effect that users have on the OSPC’s robustness is an important and closely scrutinized topic. This paper explores the robustness of the OSPC from the aspect of user knowledge contribution. We first construct an OSPC network and analyze its characteristics. An improved node evaluation method is then proposed to identify different types of knowledge contribution nodes. Further, seven node- and edge-based attack strategies are designed to simulate network robustness changes, with evaluation indicators being proposed for structural robustness and knowledge robustness. The results reveal that our proposed node evaluation method can effectively identify nodes of different knowledge contribution types. Additionally, the network is found to have different robustness performance when facing multiple deliberate attacks on three important knowledge contribution node types. Moreover, the network shows different robustness characteristics when facing deliberate attacks on betweenness and weight edges. Our findings can benefit product innovation and OSPC managers by enhancing the robustness of the OSPC network.