TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding group maintenance behavior in Free/Libre Open-Source Software projects
T2 - The case of Fire and Gaim
AU - Wei, Kangning
AU - Crowston, Kevin
AU - Li, Na Lina
AU - Heckman, Robert
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is partially supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (IIS Grant 04–14468 and HSD Grant 05-27457 ). Kangning Wei is partially supported by the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (No. 11YJC630219 ). Kevin Crowston is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation . Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2014/4
Y1 - 2014/4
N2 - In this paper, we investigate group maintenance behavior in community-based Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS) development teams. Adopting a sociolinguistic perspective, we conceptualize group maintenance behavior as interpersonal communication tactics - specifically, social presence and politeness tactics - that help maintain relationships among group members. Developer email messages were collected from two FLOSS projects with different development statuses, and their content was analyzed to identify frequently used group maintenance tactics. We then compared the group maintenance tactics used in the two projects, finding differences that reflect changes in the project work practices. Our work theoretically contributes to FLOSS research and has practical implications for FLOSS practitioners.
AB - In this paper, we investigate group maintenance behavior in community-based Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS) development teams. Adopting a sociolinguistic perspective, we conceptualize group maintenance behavior as interpersonal communication tactics - specifically, social presence and politeness tactics - that help maintain relationships among group members. Developer email messages were collected from two FLOSS projects with different development statuses, and their content was analyzed to identify frequently used group maintenance tactics. We then compared the group maintenance tactics used in the two projects, finding differences that reflect changes in the project work practices. Our work theoretically contributes to FLOSS research and has practical implications for FLOSS practitioners.
KW - Group maintenance
KW - Interpersonal communication
KW - Open source software development
KW - Politeness theory
KW - Social presence
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U2 - 10.1016/j.im.2014.02.001
DO - 10.1016/j.im.2014.02.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84896452729
SN - 0378-7206
VL - 51
SP - 297
EP - 309
JO - Information and Management
JF - Information and Management
IS - 3
ER -