How Structural Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems

With the community-based model for software development followed in open source environments becoming a viable alternative to traditional firm-based models, we examine the effects of structural embeddedness-or the nature of the relationship among projects and developers-on the success of open source projects. We find that considerable heterogeneity exists in the embeddedness of open source projects and developers. We use a visual representation of the affiliation network of projects and developers to demonstrate this heterogeneity and to develop insights about how these structures differ across projects and developers. Our main results surround the effect of this differential structural embeddedness on project success. We find that structural embeddedness has strong and significant effects on both technical and market success, but that those effects are quite complex. We use latent class regression analysis models to show that multiple regimes exist, and that some of the effects of structural embeddedness are positive under some regimes and negative in others. These findings show that different aspects of structural embeddedness have powerful but subtle effects on project success and suggest that this is a rich environment for further study.