Understanding the Motivations, Participation, and Performance of Open Source Software Developers: A Longitudinal Study of the Apache Projects

The projects of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) enjoy wide acceptance both in the marketplace and in the OSS development community. According to a recent web server survey by Netcraft (2005), the Apache webserver and its derivatives have attained a dominant 70% share of the web-server market, and the Apache webserver software is installed at more than 44 million sites worldwide. Similarly, the ASF projects consistently attract and retain the large number of participants vital for OSS project success (Von Krogh et al. 2003). The three ASF projects in this study accepted 100,000 changes from over 1,300 different open source developers from 1999-2002. Membership in the ASF is by invitation only and is based on a strict meritocracy. A characteristic of many OSS projects is the presence of a strong project leader (Raymond 1999). However, as we have noted, the Apache projects operate under a model of shared leadership and responsibility. This model of shared responsibility is reflected in the principles of the meritocracy that define advancement within the ASF (Fielding 1999).