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Why do episodic volunteers stay in FLOSS communities?

Published: 25 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Successful Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects incorporate both habitual and infrequent, or episodic, contributors. Using the concept of episodic volunteering (EV) from the general volunteering literature, we derive a model consisting of five key constructs that we hypothesize affect episodic volunteers' retention in FLOSS communities. To evaluate the model we conducted a survey with over 100 FLOSS episodic volunteers. We observe that three of our model constructs (social norms, satisfaction and community commitment) are all positively associated with volunteers' intention to remain, while the two other constructs (psychological sense of community and contributor benefit motivations) are not. Furthermore, exploratory clustering on unobserved heterogeneity suggests that there are four distinct categories of volunteers: satisfied, classic, social and obligated. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions for projects to incorporate and manage episodic volunteers, so as to better leverage this type of contributors and potentially improve projects' sustainability.

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  • (2021)The Agile Success ModelACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/346493830:4(1-46)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2021
  • (2019)Soft theoryProceedings of the Joint 7th International Workshop on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry and 6th International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice10.1109/CESSER-IP.2019.00013(30-33)Online publication date: 27-May-2019

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ICSE '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering
May 2019
1318 pages

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Published: 25 May 2019

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  1. community management
  2. episodic volunteering
  3. open source software
  4. volunteer management

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  • (2023)Contradicting Motivations in Civic Tech Software Development: Analysis of a Grassroots ProjectProceedings of the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society10.1109/ICSE-SEIS58686.2023.00021(157-163)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
  • (2021)The Agile Success ModelACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/346493830:4(1-46)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2021
  • (2019)Soft theoryProceedings of the Joint 7th International Workshop on Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry and 6th International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice10.1109/CESSER-IP.2019.00013(30-33)Online publication date: 27-May-2019

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