Understanding group maintenance behavior in Free/Libre Open-Source Software projects: The case of Fire and Gaim

• Group maintenance behavior (GMB) was studied from a sociolinguistic perspective.
• Jargon was the most frequently used GMB, followed by hedges and vocatives.
• The project that did not continue showed different GMB from the one that continues.
• The results suggest the important role of negative politeness tactics over time.

In this paper, we investigate group maintenance behavior in community-based Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS) development teams. Adopting a sociolinguistic perspective, we conceptualize group maintenance behavior as interpersonal communication tactics—specifically, social presence and politeness tactics—that help maintain relationships among group members. Developer email messages were collected from two FLOSS projects with different development statuses, and their content was analyzed to identify frequently used group maintenance tactics. We then compared the group maintenance tactics used in the two projects, finding differences that reflect changes in the project work practices. Our work theoretically contributes to FLOSS research and has practical implications for FLOSS practitioners.