http://freesoftware.mit.edu/papers/crowstonhowison.pdf

In this paper, The Social Structure of Free and Open Source Software Development, by Kevin Crowston and James Howison of Syracuse University, the social organization of these development communities is studied from the perspective of social network analysis. In so doing, the authors contest conventional notions regarding how the structures of open source projects differ from those in the environment of corporate development. It is often assumed that, while the nature of the latter consists of a top down organization, the open source community is decentralized and that this free and open flow of information is the major requirement for their functioning. Although the authors note that some developers, for instance those of the Apache project, have recognized the importance of particular individuals in the process of writing software and have taken precautions in order to be certain that these crucial links will not be lost in the future, most people in the community have yet to take into consideration the structure of the network in which they work.

Because the writing of code depends, at least to some extent, on the communication between different developers, as Crowston and Howison argue, the nature of the structure of interaction between individuals must be considered. This is in contrast to the majority of studies on network centralization solely based on who writes more of the code. Instead, the authors look at a broad range of different projects and analyze the intercommunication between project contributors during the process of reporting bugs. In investigating this level of communication centrality in a number of different open source projects, the authors hope to dispel preconceived notions regarding how the quantitative difference between them and corporations.

The conclusion reached by Crowston and Howison are very interesting. The level of centrality in the networks they analyzed is extremely close to being a normal distribution. The negative correlation between centrality and the size of the project is especially interesting. Thus, the initiator of the project plays a large role in the project’s beginning, but as the project becomes larger it becomes more decentralized. One way this study could be furthered would be to inspect how differently sized corporations have different structures of communication superimposed on their developmental networks. Thus, like much of what we have studied in class, the structure of the network is very closely linked to the path dependence of the flow of information. This, moreover, can be correlated to other unsuspected properties of the network, in this case the number of contributors. Finally, this study implies that the possibility exists for the participants in networks like these to become aware of the requirements for their survival and growth and could ultimately begin to manipulate the structures of their own communication network to their benefit.