Virtual communities as a resource for the development of OSS projects: the case of Linux ports to embedded processors

摘要

Open source software (OSS) projects represent a new paradigm of software creation and development based onhundreds or even thousands of developers and users organised in the form of a virtual community. The success of anOSS project is closely linked to the successful organisation and development of the virtual community of support.The main objective of this article is to analyse the activity of virtual communities. Social network analysis isemployed to analyse Linux ports to embedded processors as a case study to achieve this aim. The obtained resultsconfirm the necessity of structuring the virtual community with a selection of active developers and core members topromote community activity and attract peripheral users, expanding the impact of the underlying software. Theobtained result will be useful for the software industry migrating to the open source software paradigm