Social networks and open source software development

In this dissertation, we investigate the influence of social networks of open source developers on their productivity and license choices. Essay 1 investigates the influence of small world network properties of open source communities on their success. In Essay 2, we build a hidden Markov model to explore developer learning dynamics from peer interactions and experience. The effect of social networks of a project manager on his choice of open source license to govern a new open source project is investigated in Essay 3. In Essay 4, we explore the influence of social networks of open source teams on their success.