Context Of Open Source Software Research Articles

Characterizing Usability Issue Discussions in Open Source Software Projects

Usability is a crucial factor but one of the most neglected concerns in open source software (OSS). While far from an ideal approach, a common practice that OSS communities adopt to collaboratively address usability is through discussions on issue tracking systems (ITSs). However, there is little knowledge about the extent to which OSS community members engage in usability issue discussions, the aspects of usability they frequently target, and the characteristics of their collaboration around usability issue discussions. This knowledge is important for providing practical recommendations and research directions to better support OSS communities in addressing this important topic and improve OSS usability in general. To help achieve this goal, we performed an extensive empirical study on issues discussed in five popular OSS applications: three data science notebook projects (Jupyter Lab, Google Colab, and CoCalc) and two code editor projects (VSCode and Atom). Our results indicated that while usability issues are extensively discussed in the OSS projects, their scope tended to be limited to efficiency and aesthetics. Additionally, these issues are more frequently posted by experienced community members and display distinguishable characteristics, such as involving more visual communication and more participants. Our results provide important implications that can inform the OSS practitioners to better engage the community in usability issue discussion and shed light on future research efforts toward collaboration techniques and tools for discussing niche topics in diverse communities, such as the usability issues in the OSS context.

User acceptance model of open source software: an integrated model of OSS characteristics and UTAUT

Globally, the acceptance of Open Source Software (OSS) varies among the users of a company. Despite the substantive software, social, and infrastructure-related implications of OSS acceptance, the research on the acceptance of OSS across organizations inhabitants remains surprisingly limited. To propose a model for the acceptance of OSS; investigate the influence of the OSS characteristics, UTAUT constructs, and infrastructure factors on the acceptance of open source software system. It also examines the validity of UTAUT in the open source software context. Quantitative design has been used following the distribution of questionnaire among a sample of 255 individuals employed at public and private organizations (172 males and 83 females). Software quality, software interoperability, and software security had a significant impact on the performance expectancy (PE) (β = 0.445, P < 0.001), (β = 0.302, P < 0.001), (β = 0.139, P < 0.05), respectively. Moreover, PE, cost, facilitating conditions, social influence SI and self-efficacy had a notable impact on the behavioral intention (β = 0.275, P < 0.05), (β = 0.229, P < 0.01), (β = 0.136, P < 0.01), (β = 0.220, P < 0.01) and (β = 0.174, P < 0.01) respectively. A new path appears to exist between EE (effort expectancy) and PE (β = 0.215, P < 0.01). The outcomes indicated that users perceive that OSS user-friendliness must be upgraded for optimizing its benefits. It showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, self-efficacy, software security, software quality, software interoperability, and software cost are important indicators in the acceptance and implementation of OSS. Further research can be conducted in organizations to observe the implementation of OSS and its effectiveness.

Co-membership, networks ties, and knowledge flow: An empirical investigation controlling for alternative mechanisms

Co-membership has been considered as a major mechanism for knowledge flow. However, alternative mechanisms exist for the observed knowledge flow. One of the effective ways to reduce the possibility of alternative mechanisms is to make use of online settings. However, even at online settings, individuals can still directly watch and learn from each other, resulting in knowledge flow. This study investigates the impact of co-membership under the unique context of open source software (OSS) development at GitHub. It finds that both co-membership and watching are effective for knowledge flow, which further increases OSS development technical success, measured as project commits. Moreover, the impact of co-membership is much stronger than watching. While co-membership is indeed an effective mechanism for knowledge flow, its impact tends to be biased without controlling for alternative mechanisms.

Flourish or Perish? The Impact of Technological Acquisitions on Contributions to Open-Source Software

This study investigates the impact of technological acquisitions on contributions to firm-sponsored open-source software (OSS). We distinguish between internal contributors affiliated with target firms and external contributors from the community, and examine how they adjust and shift their contribution efforts as a response to technological acquisitions. Our findings reveal that acquisitions make external contributors more active both in contributing to target firms’ sponsored projects and in contributing to other projects in the community. While internal contributors reduce contributions to target firms' sponsored projects after acquisitions, they become more active in contributing to other projects in the OSS community. Therefore, our study illustrates how technological acquisitions can potentially benefit the whole OSS community by motivating contributors to reallocate development efforts. We also find that when the acquirer’s OSS experience and the project similarity between the acquirer and the target motivate both external and internal contributors to shift more of their development efforts to the acquirer's OSS projects. The implication is that the signaling effect and the synergy potential in technological acquisitions can also benefit the acquirer's own projects within the OSS community. Taken together, by diving in more granular details of OSS contribution activities, our study improves the understanding of the impacts of technological acquisitions on innovation in the OSS context.

The Influence of Risk Factors in Decision-Making Process for Open Source Software Adoption

“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” was a widely used cliché in the 1970s in the corporate IT (information technology) world. Since then, the traditional process of purchasing software has dramatically changed, challenged by the advent of open source software (OSS). Since its inception in the 1980s, OSS has matured, grown, and become one of the important driving forces of the enterprise ecosystem. However, it has also brought important IT security risks that are impacting the OSS IT adoption decision-making process. The recent Heartbleed bug demonstrated the grandeur of the issue. While much of the noise relates to the amplification of perceived risks by the popular mass media coverage, the effect is that many enterprises, mainly for risk reasons, have still chosen not to adopt OSS. We investigated “how do information security related characteristics of OSS affect the risk perception and adoption decision of OSS” by conducting an online survey of 188 IT decision-makers. The proposed Open Source Risk Adoption Model offers novel insights on the importance of the perceived risk antecedents. Our research brings new theoretical contributions, such as understanding the perceived IT security risk (PISR) relationship with adoption intention (AI) in the OSS context, for researchers and important insights for IT information professionals. We have found that IT security risk has a significant role in OSS adoption intention. Our results offer possible future research directions and extend existing theoretical understanding of OSS adoption.

An Enterprise Perspective on Customer Value Propositions for Open Source Software

IntroductionIn the context of open source software (OSS), value creation has been researched from the perspectives of individual users and suppliers. Studies have focused on the factors that motivate individuals and corporations to create and contribute to OSS (e.g., Lerner and Tirole, 2002; Dahlander and Magnusson, 2008).

Open source software adoption

Adoption of an information system could be reflected in two ways: through the adoption intentions of the non-adopters and the extent of adoption for the adopters. This study seeks to identify the motivational factors influencing individuals' adoption intentions and the extent of a system adoption within the context of Open Source Software (OSS). Building on the theoretical underpinnings of the Self-Determination Theory, we proposed and empirically assessed two conceptual models to examine OSS adopters' extent of adoption (based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and OSS non-adopters' intentions for adoption (based on amotivation). Results from the survey collected from 264 OSS adopters and 212 OSS non-adopters reveal that strategy belief amotivation is the major factor for not using OSS (i.e., non-adopters) while identified regulation is the major extrinsic motivation affecting the extent of adoption (i.e., adopters). Interestingly, intrinsic motivation to accomplish and capacity beliefs amotivation do not significantly affect adoption extent and adoption intention respectively. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Exploratory inspection—a user‐based learning method for improving open source software usability

AbstractThe increasingly widespread use of open source software (OSS) is an indication of its success. However, as a software development model OSS still has shortcomings that need to be resolved. In particular, the question of usability and its improvement in an OSS context remains a significant ongoing issue that demands further investigation. This is especially so given the unique manner in which OSS diverges from traditional software development models. Current experience with OSS does not favor the existence of a positive relation between the standard OSS development paradigm and good usability practice. We believe that addressing the inadequacy of usability expertise in the OSS community will improve the quality of its products and enhance their competitiveness. Motivated by the unique user‐driven character of the OSS model, we propose an exploratory method for inspection which is intended to assist OSS users in contributing to open source usability inspection. This method provides an effective adaptation of the ‘learning‐by‐doing’ approach to the domain of usability inspection. This is accomplished by innovatively applying usability patterns to guide usability exploration, incorporating strategies for ‘outlining knowledge’ and ‘exploration freedom’ and implementing both techniques in an integrated inspection environment. The results of an experiment involving a group of OSS users inspecting an open source project called dotproject demonstrate that this method outperforms traditional heuristics‐based inspection. The paper also considers the applicability of the usability method and tool developed to usability improvement in the context of traditional proprietary development. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Empowering the users? A critical textual analysis of the role of users in open source software development

This paper outlines a critical, textual approach for the analysis of the relationship between different actors in information technology (IT) production, and further concretizes the approach in the analysis of the role of users in the open source software (OSS) development literature. Central concepts of the approach are outlined. The role of users is conceptualized as reader involvement aiming to contribute to the configuration of the reader (to how users and the parameters for their work practices are defined in OSS texts). Afterwards, OSS literature addressing reader involvement is critically reviewed. In OSS context, the OSS writers as readers configure the reader and other readers are assumed to be capable of and interested in commenting the texts. A lack of OSS research on non-technical reader involvement is identified. Furthermore, not only are the OSS readers configured, but so are OSS writers. In OSS context while writers may be empowered, this clearly does not apply to the non-technical OSS readers. Implication for research and practice are discussed.