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The Open Source Community Of Open Source Software Developers Continued Willingness To Participate In Research

Posted on:2009-05-09Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J J TanFull Text:PDF
GTID:2199360242486231Subject:Management Science and Engineering
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The open source movement, rising in 1990s, inputs vitality to the software industry worldwide, and brings good development opportunities to China's software industry. Open source software (OSS) is applied in China more and more widely. The base of OSS is in open source community, the Sustainability of which relies on developer's continuous voluntary contributions. The participating motivation of developer has received by far a lot of the scholar's attention, for the developers participate to the open source activity without obtaining any loaves and fishes directly. So systematically study factors influence developer's continuous intention of participation is very important to the maintenance of open source community.Based on the theory of planed behavior (TPB ) and work motivation theory, the research focuses on developer satisfaction as the central construct that mediates the extent to which intrinsic and extrinsic motivations influences the continuous intention. And it examines the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that could differently affect developer satisfaction and continuous intention. The research also looks at how the level satisfaction, subjective norm and perceived behavior control influence the continuous intention.Both web-based survey and paper-based survey was conducted to collect data for using SPSS 16.0 to validate the hypothesis, and the optimized model comes into being, so the mechanism and extent of each factor's impact now becomes clear.The conclusion of this study is as below:(1) The extrinsic motivations (knowledge exchange and career advancement) and intrinsic motivations (enjoyment and community identity) have significant positive influence on developer satisfaction. And extrinsic motivation (direct use) has no significant influence on developer satisfaction.(2) Direct use, knowledge exchange, community identity and perceived behavioral control have significant positive influence on developer continuous intention; Career advancement, enjoyment and subjective norm have no significant influence on developer continuous intention.(3) Developer satisfaction has significant positive influence on the continuous intention. It partially mediates the relationship between knowledge exchange, community identity and continuous intention, while completely mediates the relationship between Career advancement, enjoyment and continuous intention. It has no mediatory influence on the relationship between direct use and continuous intention.Based on the above conclusions, the research also puts forward some insights and suggestions which are valuable to refer for Chinese open source communities, trying to provide a sound theoretical and practical foundation for further development of Chinese open source software and open source community.
Keywords/Search Tags:Open source software (OSS), Open source community, Motivation, Satisfaction, Continuous intention
PDF Full Text Request
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