Firm-Sponsored Developers in Open Source Software Projects: a Social Capital Perspective

The way in which companies benefit from open source software (OSS) communities varies and corresponds with the business strategy they maintain. One way of establishing influence in OSS communities is by deploying own resources to an OSS project. Assigning own paid developers to work for an OSS project is a suitable means to influence project work. On the other hand, the pertinent literature on user communities and governance in OSS maintains that a large proportion of influence individuals have in a community depends on their position in the community. This view is reflected by social capital theory, which posits that strong relationships and network positions that are advantageous to access information are valuable resources that affect different downstream variables, most importantly value creation. Thus, this study aims to extend research that has used social capital theory to investigate online communities by testing a conceptual model of social capital and individual’s value creation and assessing the influence of firm-sponsorship on the context.