The relationship between structure and performance of open source projects: Case of learning content management systems.

摘要

This research uses two perspectives, the communities of practice and sectoral systems of innovation, to examine the relationship between structure and performance of 12 open source projects that develop learning content management systems. The results suggests that: (i) the structure of an open source project can be operationalized in terms of the location of the development team (concentrated and distributed) and the role where leadership is located (project manager, community leader, and Board); (ii) open source projects with a distributed development team led by community leaders perform better than other open source projects; and (iii) the communities of practice perspective can be used to examine open source projects. The outcomes of this research include write ups on open source projects that develop learning content management systems, insights on the structure-performance relationship for open source projects, propositions, and a set of variables that may lead to increased performance of open source projects.