Sourcing knowledge in open source software projects: The impacts of internal and external social capital on project success

Open source software (OSS) development has become an essential element of IT strategy: many firms seek OSS as a strategic means of unlocking the business value in external developer communities and internal knowledge sources. However, integrating external and internal sources of social capital is challenging and identifying appropriate integration strategies is crucial for the success of such endeavors. This study examines the simultaneous effects of external and internal sources of social capital, in the form of participant and project differences, and examines how they interact to influence OSS project success. We propose a taxonomy of participant differences (language, role, and contribution) and project differences (development environment and connectedness) and postulate their main and moderating effects on project success. Using a four-year panel data set of 329 SourceForge projects, we show that development environment difference has a curvilinear relationship with success and that connectedness reduces the positive impact of role and contribution diversity on project success. We also show that when development environment difference is moderate, the impact of role diversity is the most positive. We present the implications of these findings for theory and practice.