Development of a Theory-grounded Socialization Framework to Investigate Newcomer Socialization in Free/Open Source Software Communities

Attracting a large number of new contributors has been seen as a way to ensure the survival, long-term success, and sustainability of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) communities. FOSS communities have thus for long seized the criticality of generating effective initiatives to facilitate the socialization of community newcomers. However, FOSS socialization research has suffered from a lack of well-grounded theoretical considerations. This research project uses the well-acknowledged socialization model from Van Maanen and Schein (1979) to revisit FOSS socialization by deriving a FOSSspecific socialization framework and its associated measurement instrument. The paper provides a theoretically-grounded and fully-validated research tool for researchers who wish to study the FOSS socialization phenomenon. The study reported on here used a three-phased approach involving the construction of a socialization framework using qualitative data gathering, the development of a measurement instrument, and its validation using a full-scale online survey involving 367 contributors from 12 large FOSS communities.