ویژگی های رهبری و انگیزش توسعه دهندگان در توسعه نرم افزار متن باز

Open Source Software (OSS) is generally developed by interested professionals who have decided to participate in the process. The presence of effective leaders who both steer the development and motivate the developers is crucial to ensure a successful product. Using path-goal theory and built on leadership and motivation theories, we proposed and tested a model that can be used to assess the relationship between an OSS project leader's leadership style and a developer's motivation to contribute to the software development. We specifically decomposed the leadership and motivation construct to understand the hidden mechanisms by which leadership impacts motivation. A set of survey data collected from 118 OSS developers on Sourceforge.net was used to test our hypotheses. Our results indicate that leaders’ transformational leadership is positively related to developers’ intrinsic motivation and that leaders’ active management style is positively related to the developers’ extrinsic motivation.

Open Source Software (OSS) development differs from traditional proprietary software development because it is performed by a community rather than by paid employees [4]. Despite its voluntary basis, OSS has proliferated resulting in thousands of applications. For example, SourceForge.net, the world's largest OSS development web site, had successfully produced more than 324,000 software projects by the end of April 2012.3 This suggests that OSS, though seemingly developed by a chaotic and anarchistic community, is becoming an important source of software. One might wonder how an OSS project can attract substantial contributions from world-wide developers and yet be managed effectively [17]. In our view, the presence of leaders, who both steer the development direction and motivate the developers to contribute is crucial to ensure a successful outcome of an OSS project. For instance, the Apache project leader recognizes developers’ effort by giving them rights to vote in determining the development direction of the project. Similarly, Linux and Perl projects have generated incentive structures to recognize developers’ contributions. In light of the importance of having authoritative figures, prior studies have postulated the importance of considering a good organization and coordination of activities in an OSS project, as well as the influence of motivation of an individual developer to contribute to an OSS project [15]. These factors correspond to the administration of the project and the participation of the co-workers (developers) respectively. However, no detailed study has previously been conducted to examine these factors together. Given the fast development environment, practitioners are beginning to consider the possibility of incorporating OSS development strategies into the production of commercial software; this has been termed OSS 2.0, but unless knowledge is gained on the role of the OSS leader, the incorporation of OSS strategies into commercial software development will only be superficial. We therefore sought to focus our research on understanding the effects of an OSS leader's leadership style on developers’ motivation to contribute to a project. Using path-goal theory, we built on leadership and motivation theories to propose a model that posits the behavioral effects of OSS project leaders on developers’ motivation to contribute. Contribution, here, was measured as the amount of time a developer spends on an OSS project. Our model was empirically assessed using survey data collected from 118 developers in an online OSS community. By decomposing leadership into different styles and investigating their influence on the OSS developers’ decision to contribute to the OSS project, we were able to gain a better understanding of the types of leadership approaches needed to succeed in developing an OSS project.

OSS is developed by a group of decentralized and geographically dispersed unpaid developers. To manage and motivate the developers, an OSS leader must possess a transformational nature, intrinsically motivating the developers, or a transactional nature to extrinsically motivate them. Anchoring on path-goal theory, our study has provided a holistic examination of the impact the leadership style on developers’ motivation to contribute. We believe research on OSS leadership style deserves more attention, not only because of its theoretical implications, but also for its practical contributions towards making OSS project a success.