A Study of Open Source Software Development from Control Perspective

Open source software (OSS) has achieved great success and exerted significant impact on the software industry. OSS development takes online community as its organizational form, and developers voluntarily work for the project. In the project execution process, control aligns individual behaviors toward the organizational goals via the Internet and becomes critical to the success of OSS projects. This paper investigates the control modes in OSS project communities, and their effects on project performance. Based on a web survey and archival data from OSS projects, it is revealed that three types of control modes, that is, outcome, clanship, and self-control, are effective in an OSS project community. The study contributes to a better understanding of OSS project organizations and processes, and provides advice for OSS development. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2044-5.ch002