%0 Journal Article %J Technology Innovation Management Review %D 2013 %T Sustainability in Open Source Software Commons: Lessons Learned from an Empirical Study of SourceForge Projects %A Charles M. Schweik %K commons %K institutional analysis %K internet-based collaboration %K open source software %K SourceForge %X In this article, we summarize a five-year US National Science Foundation funded study designed to investigate the factors that lead some open source projects to ongoing collaborative success while many others become abandoned. Our primary interest was to conduct a study that was closely representative of the population of open source software projects in the world, rather than focus on the more-often studied, high-profile successful cases. After building a large database of projects (n=174,333) and implementing a major survey of open source developers (n=1403), we were able to conduct statistical analyses to investigate over forty theoretically-based testable hypotheses. Our data firmly support what we call the conventional theory of open source software, showing that projects start small, and, in successful cases, grow slightly larger in terms of team size. We describe the “virtuous circle” supporting conventional wisdom of open source collaboration that comes out of this analysis, and we discuss two other interesting findings related to developer motivations and how team members find each other. Each of these findings is related to the sustainability of these projects. %B Technology Innovation Management Review %I Talent First Network %C Ottawa %V 3 %P 13-19 %8 01/2013 %G eng %U http://timreview.ca/article/645 %N 1 %1 University of Massachusetts Amherst Charles M. Schweik (Charlie) is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment shared between the Department of Environmental Conservation (http://eco.umass.edu) and the Center for Public Policy and Administration (www.masspolicy.org) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government (www.ncdg.org) and the founding member of a new “Workshop on the Study of Knowledge Commons” on campus. His research focuses on environmental management and policy, public-sector information technology, and the intersection of those domains. %R http://doi.org/10.22215/timreview/645