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The Five Stages of Open Source Volunteering

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Crowdsourcing

Part of the book series: Progress in IS ((PROIS))

Abstract

Today’s software systems build on open source software. Thus, we need to understand how to successfully create, nurture, and mature the software development communities of these open source projects. In this article, we review and discuss best practices of the open source volunteering and recruitment process that successful project leaders are using to lead their projects to success. We combine the perspective of the volunteer, looking at a project, with the perspective of a project leader, looking to find additional volunteers for the project. We identify a five-stage process consisting of a connecting, understanding, engaging, performing, and leading stage. The underlying best practices, when applied, significantly increase the chance of an open source project being successful.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ann Barcomb and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments that improved the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nüremberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Dirk Riehle

Authors
  1. Dirk Riehle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dirk Riehle .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Software Development Environment, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    Wei Li

  2. Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA

    Michael N. Huhns

  3. School of Computing, Informatics & Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University Dept. Computer Science & Engineering, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Wei-Tek Tsai

  4. School of Computer Science & Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    Wenjun Wu

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Riehle, D. (2015). The Five Stages of Open Source Volunteering. In: Li, W., Huhns, M., Tsai, WT., Wu, W. (eds) Crowdsourcing. Progress in IS. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-47011-4_2

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