Cave or Community?: An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects

First Monday, 2002

12 Pages Posted: 16 Feb 2005

See all articles by Sandeep Krishnamurthy

Sandeep Krishnamurthy

University of Washington, Bothell - E-Commerce and Marketing

Abstract

Starting with Eric Raymond's groundbreaking work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, open-source software (OSS) has commonly been regarded as work produced by a community of developers. Yet, given the nature of software programs, one also hears of developers with no lives that work very hard to achieve great product results. In this paper, I sought empirical evidence that would help us understand which is more common - the cave (i.e., lone producer) or the community. Based on a study of the top 100 mature products on Sourceforge, I find a few surprising things. First, most OSS programs are developed by individuals, rather than communities. The median number of developers in the 100 projects I looked at was 4 and the mode was 1 - numbers much lower than previous numbers reported for highly successful projects! Second, most OSS programs do not generate a lot of discussion. Third, products with more developers tend to be viewed and downloaded more often. Fourth, the number of developers associated with a project was positively correlated to the age of the project. Fifth, the larger the project, the smaller the percent of project administrators.

Keywords: Open Source, Group Structure, One-person groups, Community

Suggested Citation

Krishnamurthy, Sandeep, Cave or Community?: An Empirical Examination of 100 Mature Open Source Projects. First Monday, 2002, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=667402

Sandeep Krishnamurthy (Contact Author)

University of Washington, Bothell - E-Commerce and Marketing ( email )

Business Administration Program, UW-1-233
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Bothell, WA Washington State 98011
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HOME PAGE: http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep

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