Network Analysis of a Large Scale Open Source Project

Industry involvement in open source software development has become a popular practice among companies which, e.g., share software development costs with other community participants or implement an open source based business model. An increased understanding of the underlying development structure, especially in a case where the community participants are composed of competing industry members, can be viewed as an important component of a company’s business strategy planning and management. One way to understand the social structure of an open source community is by applying network analysis to its source code repositories. This case study shows how a large, company sponsored, and industry backed open source project, i.e. an open source project with the majority of the community members affiliated with the industry, is structured. In particular, it shows that the involvement of an entire industry eco system within a company sponsored open source project does not imply more equal distribution of the participating community members’ influences in terms of committers’ social networks. This setup of an open source community by itself does not imply any particular, either positive or negative, connotations. Consequently, the results of the study should be interpreted on a case basis, within a context of a company’s strategy to participate or base products around a company sponsored open source product.