Sampling Process Model for Coordination and Communication in Free/Open Source Software Projects

Abstract

The Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) development environment consists of three components: The development process, the community of software development volunteers and the coordination and communication tools. The rise and expansion of Internet make this concept of cooperative software development model a dominant force in comparison to the traditional software development. Various project hosting sites for F/OSS projects across an entire range of applications have come up offering a multitude of services for developers as well as users. Various aspects of F/OSS are being studied by researchers. Coordination and Communication become key factors in F/OSS development for information dissemination among its decentralized and geographically spread-out teams of volunteers. It becomes important to choose the right sample to study this aspect. This paper proposes a four-phase sampling process model especially suited for studies related to coordination and communication aspects in F/OSS although it can be extended to all aspects of F/OSS development with suitable changes in the parameters.