Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Research Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/respol

Monetary donations to an open source software platform

Sandeep Krishnamurthy a,1,2 , Arvind K. Tripathi b,∗,2
a
E-Commerce and Marketing, Business Administration Program, University of Washington, Bothell, Box 358533,
18115 Campus Way NE, Room UW1-233, Bothell, WA 98011-8246, United States
b
Department of ISOM, Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3200, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Online open source software platforms, such as Sourceforge.net, play a vital role in creating an ecosystem
Received 10 May 2007 that enables the creation and growth of open source projects. However, there is little research exploring
Received in revised form the interactions between open source stakeholders and the platform. We believe that the sustainability
24 September 2008
of the platform crucially depends on financial incentives. While platforms can obtain these incentives
Accepted 4 November 2008
through multiple means, in this paper we focus on one form of financial incentives—voluntary mone-
Available online 24 December 2008
tary donations by open source community members. We report findings from two empirical studies that
examine factors that impact donations. Study 1 investigates the factors that cause some community mem-
Keywords:
Donation
bers to donate and not others. We find that the decision to donate is impacted by relational commitment
Open source software platform with open source software platform, donation to projects and accepting donations from others. Study 2
Identification examines what drives the level of donation. We find that the length of association with the platform and
Reciprocity relational commitment affects donation levels.
Collective action Published by Elsevier B.V.
Relational commitment

1. Introduction
Open source online software platforms (e.g. Sourceforge.net and
Savannah) play a vital role in the creation, updation, maintenance,
support and distribution of open source software (OSS). A software
platform is defined as “a software package that enables the real-
ization of application systems” (Taudes et al., 2000). A software
platform built on virtual organization (Nambisan, 2002) is an online
software platform.
Online platforms facilitate virtual software development of OSS
projects for free. As a result, the platform is of vital importance to
a variety of stakeholders including volunteer software developers,
universities, non-profit organizations and corporations. Volunteers
help with activities related to software development (Lerner and
Tirole, 2002, 2004; Von Hippel, 2001), bug fixing (Crowston and
Howison, 2003) and user-to-user customer service (Lakhani and
Von Hippel, 2003). With greater integration of open source in the
development of software, some firms have created business models
around OSS projects hosted on these platforms (Fitzgerald, 2006).
Others have made their projects available on platforms to encour-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 206 221 5369; fax: +1 206 543 3968.
E-mail addresses: sandeep@u.washington.edu (S. Krishnamurthy),
tripathi@u.washington.edu (A.K. Tripathi).
1
Tel.: +1 425 352 5229; fax: +1 425 352 5277.
2
Order of authors is alphabetical—both authors contributed equally.
age participation. For instance, Google has made available at least
five open source projects on Sourceforge.net, Google mAIM, Core-
Dumper, Sparse Hashtable, Perftools, and GoopyFunctional, and
Microsoft has released projects such as WiX, WTL and FlexWiki.
OSS participants use the infrastructure, code and tools provided
by these software platforms to create OSS projects and participate
in projects created by others. Non-profit institutions and univer-
sities benefit from the presence of free software and source code
in implementing mission-centric applications. For instance, Moo-
dle is an open source courseware that competes with professional
software products such as Blackboard.
Communities form around open source projects hosted on
online platforms and bring in positive network effects for its mem-
bers. The role of network externalities in open source has been well
documented. One set of studies has argued that network externali-
ties compensate for the openness of software and code. Bonaccorsi
and Rossi (2004) have argued that open source software aid in the
diffusion of new products due to the creation of direct, indirect and
complementary service-based network externalities. Dahlander
(2005) argues that the creation of network externalities allows
firms to offset the absence of intellectual property protection in
open source. Another stream of research has investigated the role
of network externalities in competition between open source and
proprietary software. Economides and Katsamakas (2006) model
the competition between open source and proprietary software
platforms and argue that the open source approach leads to greater
variety in applications. Bitzer and Schröder (2007) argue that

0048-7333/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier B.V.

doi:10.1016/j.respol.2008.11.004
 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414
network externalities might lead to the lowering of the total cost
of ownership of software programs providing open source vendors
with an advantage.
Both these sets of research focus on a single product-selling firm
and how it might compensate for factors inherent to the nature
of open source by leveraging network externalities. However, our
perspective is that of a platform and the diverse stakeholders
that benefit from it. On open source online platforms, network
externalities with respect to one stakeholder group reinforce the
attractiveness of the platform to other groups. For instance, the
presence of a large group of open source developers might make the
platform attractive to potential users of software programs. How-
ever, building these various networks leads to greater infrastructure
costs—examples of cost components might include the cost of com-
puters, servers and a dedicated staff. Finding the right financial
incentives to support the platform to ensure its long-term survival
and innovation becomes crucial.
At this point, there is no study investigating whether and why
the stakeholders of an online platform respond to this need by vol-
untarily donating to OSS online software platforms. Our paper fills
this important gap by investigating the motivation of individuals
to provide one type of financial incentive, i.e., voluntary mone-
tary contributions, to the online software platform provider. In two
empirical studies, we add to the open source literature by study-
ing the causal antecedents to monetary donations to an online
software platform. We contribute to the literature by—(a) expli-
cating the role of the online software platform in the OSS universe,
(b) investigating the causal antecedents to donation behavior with
respect to online software platforms and (c) applying reciprocity
and identification theory in the context of open source software.
2. Literature review and theory building
2.1. Collective action
Open source software, inherently, involves collective action
among the participants (Olson, 1965). Collective action has been
studied by theoretical and experimental economists, psychologists
and other social scientists for decades—an extensive review of this
literature is beyond the scope of this paper. This research may
be found in studies of social dilemmas (Dawes, 1980), common
resource dilemmas (Hardin, 1968), public goods (Ledyard, 1995)
and Prisoner’s Dilemma games (Axelrod, 1984). This literature is
chiefly interested in the tradeoff between private gain (e.g. through
“free-riding” in Prisoner’s Dilemma games) and public good. Even
though rational choice models predict complete free-riding, exper-
imental evidence suggests that participants respond to the size
of the incentives, pre-play communication, contribution targets or
thresholds (Davis and Holt, 1992, Chapter 6), group size and expec-
tations of others’ behavior (Dawes, 1980).
From the earliest conceptualization, open source software has
been regarded as a theater of collective action—notable examples
include the use of descriptors such as “bazaar” (Raymond, 1998)
and “cooking pot markets” (Ghosh, 1998). Notably, Von Hippel
and Von Krogh (2003) have argued that open source exhibits fea-
tures of both private and collective action, i.e., participants obtain
private benefits while creating a public good. They argue that par-
ticipants gain “selective incentives” that will not be available to
free-riders. For instance, those who participate might derive a great
sense of fun and enjoyment stemming from problem solving and
might derive a deep sense of identification with a community. Von
Krogh et al. (2003) argue that the size of a project is the cen-
tral collective action problem and find that unless a developer
follows a specific “joining script”, entry into an open source soft-
ware project is restricted. Lerner and Tirole (2002) bring up the
405
free-riding issue by asking—“Why should thousands of top-notch
programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good?”
Von Hippel and Von Krogh (2003) answer this by stating that
“programmers contribute freely to the provision of a public good
because they garner private benefits from doing so.” The current
empirical research has sought to identify Lerner and Tirole’s ques-
tion by identifying three fundamental dimensions of open source
developer motivation (Lakhani and Von Hippel, 2003; Lakhani and
Wolf, 2005; Lerner and Tirole, 2004; Roberts et al., 2006; Rossi,
2004; Stewart and Gosain, 2006). Intrinsic motivation stems from
the act of participation—e.g. fun, flow, learning and community.
Extrinsic motivation originates from external rewards—e.g. finan-
cial rewards, improving future job prospects, signaling quality.
Ideological motivation comes from a strong belief in the values
underpinning OSS development methodology. These components
are not mutually exclusive and can co-exist (Roberts et al., 2006).
2.2. Giving behaviors
Giving behaviors have been studied in various social sciences
including psychology, economics and anthropology. In an exten-
sive review of the literature on donor behavior, Bendapudi et al.
(1996) describe four steps in a sequential process—perception of
need, motivation, behavior and consequences. Donors are likely
to give to charities that they identify with, that others like them-
selves identify with (Shang et al., 2008), that they perceive as being
in greater need for funds—especially due to external causes that
are not within the control of the agency, when they are labeled
in a way that is consistent with their moral identity (Reed et al.,
2007). Donors also like to give when they have received help from
the agency in the past and when normative or social-comparison
appeals are used in the marketing communication (Bendapudi et
al., 1996).
There is also an extensive anthropological or interpretive liter-
ature on gift-giving behavior (Otnes and Beltramini, 1996). This
literature views the act of gift-giving as symbolic, i.e., “what it
would appear to convey about the giver and the giver–recipient
relationship” (Belk, 1976, p. 155). Gift-giving occasions are given
importance in this literature—e.g. Fischer and Arnold (1990) study
Christmas gift-giving and conclude that while it might be a “labor
of love” for some, it is generally viewed as “women’s work.”
The motivation to give to charitable institutions may be egoistic
or altruistic (Bendapudi et al., 1996; Rose-Ackerman, 1996). Donors
are interested in the size of their donation, also called “the warm
glow” effect, as well as the total level of donations to the charitable
institution (Andreoni, 1990). The level of household income affects
the size of the donation and a recent meta-analysis by McClelland
and Brooks (2004) concluded that the variable with “the most pre-
dictive power over charitable giving is income” (p. 483) and that
previous research has “always found positive income elasticities,
although there is a wide variance in these estimates” (p. 484).
Open source is characterized by an ethos of volunteerism that
extends to developers as well as firms. Developers voluntarily con-
tribute their time, code and software programs. The online platform
similarly voluntarily contributes a platform to facilitate the devel-
opment and distribution of open source software. The effect of
financial incentives on this volunteerism ethos is a matter of great
discussion. Some have argued that building a system that involves
on a group of volunteers is simply not sustainable in the long-run.
As one scholar put it, “. . . those involved (in open source) are nei-
ther driven primarily by ideology nor seeking to make vast fortunes.
They simply wish to earn a reasonable livelihood from their efforts”
(Fitzgerald, 2006). Others argue that providing financial incentives
to volunteer developers might reduce their productivity. This argu-
ment is based on the voluminous literature in psychology that has
investigated the role of extrinsic rewards on motivation (Deci et al.,
406 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414
1999). This literature generally argues that the presence of extrinsic
rewards crowds out intrinsic motivational components—especially
if the rewards are contingent on the completion of the task. How-
ever, the empirical evidence on this is sparse and mixed. For
instance, one study found that the presence of financial rewards,
specifically, salaries, did not lead to lowered intrinsic motivation
(Roberts et al., 2006).
The problem might be that scholars have not fully investigated
the range of possible financial incentives. A plurality of finan-
cial incentives is prevalent in the open source system including
salary, bounties (Krishnamurthy and Tripathi, 2006), donations
(Krishnamurthy et al., 2008) and grants. Krishnamurthy (2006) pro-
vides a classification of financial incentives based on distribution
pattern (all or few), type of provider (corporation, NPO, individual),
contingency and conditionality. In addition, these incentives might
be provided to an individual, a project, a platform or a firm. At this
point, there has been an excessive focus on salaries to develop-
ers. Our research is an effort to expand the discussion by studying
voluntary contributions to an online open source software platform.
2.3. Conceptualizing the online open source platform
Online open source platforms are virtual collections of OSS
projects. They provide interested individuals with a place to meet
others, plan tasks, work in a virtual environment (Nambisan, 2002),
check out and check in source code and release products. Thus,
these platforms could be variously thought of as a large virtual
organization (Nambisan, 2002, Markus et al., 2000), a collection
of virtual product development teams, a community of develop-
ers and interested end-users (Hagel and Armstrong, 1997) and
a repository/library of software and source code. Examples of
such platforms include Sourceforge.net, FSF/UNESCO Free Software
Directory,3 Savannah,4 and BerliOS Developer.5
Sourceforge is considerably superior to the others in terms of
scope with respect to the number of registered developers and OSS
projects and also in the virtual work environment that it offers
to facilitate group formation and operation (Nambisan, 2002). It
is operated by a public, for-profit corporation—VA Software. The
free hosting of the large number of projects on Sourceforge is cor-
porate philanthropy (Hess et al., 2002; Porter and Kramer, 2002).
Projects hosted on Sourceforge get the benefit of free hosting and
access to the technologies of virtual organization (Nambisan, 2002).
This altruistic act has led to the creation of a community around
the company’s activities (Hagel and Armstrong, 1997) which pro-
vides further benefits to participants. At the same time, Sourceforge
generates revenue through advertisements from major information
technology companies such as IBM, Oracle, Google and Microsoft by
leveraging the size and quality of the developer community on the
site. Moreover, at the time of writing, VA Software sells an advanced
version of the software that powers Sourceforge.net to corpora-
tions as an enterprise product at $2725 per-seat plus 20% for annual
maintenance, which includes support and software upgrades.
Extant research on open source software has been dispropor-
tionately interested in the individual project (e.g. LINUX, Freenet,
Gnome) rather than understanding the facilitating role of the
open source platform. The research on open source platforms has
been limited to the study of project group size and structure
(Crowston and Howison, 2003; Hunt and Johnson, 2002; Healy and
Schussman, 2004; Madey et al., 2004; Hahsler, 2004). The enduring
finding from these studies is that there is a power-law relationship
in group size, i.e., very few groups are large and most are very small.
3
http://www.gnu.org/directory.
4
http://www.savannah.gnu.org.
5
http://www.developer.berlios.de/.
However, this does not necessarily provide a theoretical model of
the platform.
We conceptualize the OSS online development platform as the
central hub that enables interaction among various stakeholders
including volunteer software developers, universities, non-profit
organizations and corporations. By providing the infrastructure at
no cost and acting as a volunteer firm, online OSS development
platforms lay the foundation for OSS development. Developers and
projects come from all parts of the world. Therefore, the stakehold-
ers in OSS have a vital interest in providing financial incentives to
such platforms to ensure their sustainability and quality. Stakehold-
ers might either contribute to the platform by hosting a project or
by working on a project or simply benefit from what the platform
offers by downloading software or code or both.
Developers can benefit from the platform by recruiting other
talented developers, using the platform to distribute their product
for free and can enhance their reputation and visibility by partic-
ipating in various activities (Lerner and Tirole, 2002). They might
also contribute to the platform by contributing software and code,
participation in various developmental activities on public projects
(e.g. bug fixing, documentation) and providing user-to-user service
(Lakhani and Von Hippel, 2003; Crowston and Howison, 2003).
Businesses participate by sponsoring projects, making code
available, encouraging their employees to participate in OSS
projects and by using the code to enhance their own software devel-
opment process (Krishnamurthy, 2003). This participation helps
these businesses by creating a larger community of developers who
might work on enhancing the original project or create new applica-
tions. Large corporations (e.g. Red Hat Linux, IBM) have developed
business models keeping OSS platforms in mind (Fitzgerald, 2006;
Krishnamurthy, 2003, 2005).
Open source users benefit from a free download of valuable
intellectual capital, i.e., code, and by gaining direct access to the
authors of the code. They might contribute to the platform by pro-
viding feedback on product performance to the authors and others
(Lakhani and Von Hippel, 2003).
The platform performs three functions—mediation, aggregation
and filtering. First, the platform mediates interaction among vari-
ous stakeholders and acts as a catalyst in enabling greater and more
effective exchanges. Since visitors to an online platform arrive with
a shared understanding of what the platform represents and with
a sense of identification with OSS, it leads to more effective and
efficient interaction. The platform enables more efficient interac-
tion among the stakeholder groups since those who participate are
likely to be more interested in OSS methodology. Second, OSS online
development platforms aggregate members of stakeholder groups.
Open source developers benefit from the platform by gaining access
to a pool of developer talent, interested users and business partic-
ipants. Businesses benefit from an aggregation of developers and
users. This allows the platform to build network externalities across
stakeholder groups. Third, OSS online development platforms help
differentiate between high-quality and low-quality participants.
Developers who work on open source projects have a portfolio
of their work on public display for interested businesses, devel-
opers and users on the platform. Users can choose to download
projects that involve high-quality developers who have been work-
ing on the platform for a long period of time. Similarly, developers
and users can work with businesses who have demonstrated a
commitment to the OSS development model by sharing projects.
Given these pressures, community members are constantly search-
ing for credible means to signal their reputation and commitment.
Platforms, therefore, offer recognition systems (see the discus-
sion in Section 3.3 on recognition symbols) so that participants
can be rewarded for subscribing to the platform, donation to the
platform and for performing important tasks (Lerner and Tirole,
2002).
 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414
Fig. 1. Conceptual framework for investigating individuals motivations to donate to open source software development platform.
A variety of financial incentives might help online open source
software platforms (Krishnamurthy, 2006). At this point, there is
little research on who provides these incentives and why. In this
paper, we add to the literature by studying the motivations to pro-
vide one form of financial incentive, voluntary donations, to an
OSS platform.6 Open source software platforms benefit from other
financial incentives which include the sale of the platform software
to corporations, voluntary contributions by non-profit organiza-
tions and advertising. Future research must investigate these other
incentive structures.
2.4. Conceptual framework
There are two inter-related research questions that we seek to
address in this paper—(a) What drives a developer’s decision to
contribute to an online open source platform?, and (b) What are
the factors that impact the donation quantity to an online open
source platform? We develop a conceptual framework to guide
us in the process of answering these two research questions—see
Fig. 1.
In order to answer these two research questions, we rely on
two theories that been developed extensively—identification the-
ory and reciprocity theory. The general idea that donors are more
likely to give to charities that they closely identify with is well estab-
lished in the literature on charitable giving (Bendapudi et al., 1996;
Bhattacharya et al., 1995). Similarly, reciprocity and its place in
helping and giving behaviors has a long history in various social sci-
ences (Kolm, 2000, 2004; Gouldner, 1960; Sugden, 1984; Cialdini,
1993; Mauss, 1955).
2.4.1. Association with an open source platform
Open source software is community-oriented (Hars and Ou,
2002; Lakhani and Wolf, 2005). OSS participants work in project
teams built on transparency and egalitarian norms. In contrast to
organizations, where employees are assigned circumscribed roles,
open source software teams encourage initiative and freedom.
Open source participants often have a strong ideological basis to
their actions (Stewart and Gosain, 2006). As a result, participants
that are associated with an open source project develop a great
6
http://www.sourceforge.net.
407
sense of identification with the project and with the idea of open
source itself. Research in identification theory finds that identi-
fication with the organization is a powerful force that positively
impacts the level of monetary contributions (Bhattacharya et al.,
1995). Moreover, consumers are likely to donate to a charitable
cause if they are told that a donor who shares their identity has
made a large contribution (Shang et al., 2008).
In the context of open source, application of identification the-
ory has been limited. One notable application of this theory in
open source comes from a study of Linux developers (Hertel et
al., 2003). This research found that a developer’s engagement with
Linux-based projects was affected by his/her identity as a Linux
developer. This paper distinguishes between a higher level identi-
fication with open source and a more specific identification with
a specific sub-system and finds that greater specificity in iden-
tification leads to greater engagement. Lakhani and Wolf (2005)
also argue that in open source projects “we see a strong sense of
community identification.” (p. 5). However, they do not report any
identification-related effects in their results.
In this paper, we study three forms of association with an open
source software platform—subscription, tenure and project mem-
bership.
2.4.2. Financial Motivation-Reciprocity Theory
Reciprocity is one of the important social forces that enables
social exchanges and hence, a civil society (Kolm, 2000, 2004).
Reciprocity norms may exist across societies (Gouldner, 1960). The
reciprocity norm is so powerful that there is evidence that indi-
viduals are likely to reciprocate unwanted gifts (Cialdini, 1993),
reciprocate at a level that is higher than the amount of benefit
received from others (Mauss, 1955; Reagan, 1971) and reciprocate
even when one’s private benefits are maximized by not recipro-
cating (Berg et al., 1995). Reciprocity has been recognized as an
important motivator in providing public goods (Sugden, 1984),
charitable giving behavior (Potters et al., 2001), collective action
(Fehr and Gachter, 2000), non-profit fundraising (Falk, 2004) and
financial assistance to the needy (Thomas and Worrall, 2002). It has
been found that people also donate because they are attached to the
organization or a cause (Brady et al., 2002).
Open source software has always involved interdependence and
helping behaviors among developers. The metaphors of “cooking
pot markets” (Ghosh, 1998) and a “bazaar” (Raymond, 1998) are
408 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414
Table 1
Descriptive statistics.
Variables
Sample size
Nature of sample
Subscriber (%)
Median age at time of donation (months)
Developers accepting donations (%)
Developers associated with active projects (%)
Developers who donated to OSS development platform (%)
Developers who donated to top 15% active OSS projects (%)
Median frequency of donations to OSS development platform
clear descriptors of the community orientation of open source.
Lakhani and Von Hippel (2003) study the impact of reciprocity
expectations on developer behavior among individuals associated
with the Apache project. They find limited support for reciprocity-
based behaviors. In our context, we expect that several OSS
participants are likely to have benefited from the use of the online
open source platform leading them to reciprocate through dona-
tions.
2.4.3. Short qualitative study
In order to validate the theoretical bases for our study, we col-
lected comments left by donors on the Sourceforge website. This is
provided in Appendix A.
2.5. Income as a control variable
A large body of research in non-profit charitable giving in the
economics area has consistently found that income influences giv-
ing behavior (McClelland and Brooks, 2004). Therefore, we begin
our exploration of donation behavior by an investigation of the
relationship between income and level of giving.
We conducted an email survey of 765 donors to Sourceforge—
these represented all donors from October 2003 to mid-June 2004.
We received a total of 105 usable responses constituting a response
rate of 13.72%. The descriptive characteristics of this sample and
the samples used in Study 1 and 2 are shown in Table 1. We
asked respondents for their annual net income in the last one
year (Income). The average income of the respondents in last one
year (Income) was $55,634 (median: 37,500, std. dev: $48,477).
We studied their donation to Sourceforge in the same period.
Donation amounts to Sourceforge (DonSF) were gleaned from pub-
lic records on the web site. Average donation amount was $20.
We find that the correlation between DonSF and Income was
weak, positive and not significantly different from zero (0.03353,
p = 0.7392).
2.6. Giving to for-profit corporation
It was not clear to us if developers who donated knew that
the open source platform under study (Sourceforge) was oper-
ated by a for-profit corporation (VA Software)—even though this
is mentioned at various places. To ascertain this, in the afore-
mentioned survey, we also asked two questions. First, we asked
donors, “At the time of donation, did you know that Sourceforge.net
was owned and operated by a for-profit company?” A signifi-
cant majority of respondents, 64.76%, indicated knowledge of the
for-profit status of Sourceforge.net. Second, we asked those who
did not know the for-profit status of the company, “Would you
donate money to Sourceforge.net today after learning that it is
owned and operated by a for-profit company-VA Corporation?”
A significant proportion of respondents with no previous knowl-
edge, 87.61%, indicated that they would not change their donation
behavior.
Preliminary survey Study 1 Study 2
105 8920 835
Donors only Donors and non-donors Donors only
14% 0.5% 14%
18 49 18
24.8% 3.65% 23.2%
5.4% 100% 8.6%
100% 0.81% 100%
N/A 0.06% N/A
1 1 1
3. Study 1
3.1. Introduction
Open source literature has studied individual motivation to par-
ticipate in OSS projects by writing code, fixing bugs and providing
customer service. Little is known about what drives OSS develop-
ers to make monetary donations. Our specific focus in this study is
on the question—“Why do some community participants give money
to an open source software development platform and not others?”
Building on the qualitative analysis, we now discuss the results
of a quantitative investigation where we examined the impact of
the causal antecedents on the decision to donate to an online open
source platform.
3.2. Hypotheses
Subscription is an indication of relational commitment (Morgan
and Hunt, 1994; Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). Those who subscribe
to a service indicate a preference for a longer term interactive
relationship with a firm or agency rather than a one-shot trans-
action. By purchasing the subscription, which is recognized on OSS
platform, individuals signal their desire to associate with the orga-
nization (Bhattacharya et al., 1995). Subscribers derive relational
benefits from their interaction (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2002) lead-
ing to a strong sense of identification with the OSS development
platform. These gains from the relationship can be categorized as
social, psychological and special treatment benefits (Gwinner et al.,
1998). Johnson and Garbarino (2001) investigate subscribing cus-
tomers of performing arts organizations and compare them with
non-subscribers. They find that subscribers have higher levels of
satisfaction which leads to higher level of trust and commitment
for the organization. Thus, subscribers have more positive inten-
tions of supporting the organization and donating to it. Therefore,
we hypothesize that
H1. Subscribers are more likely to donate to an open source devel-
opment platform in comparison to non-subscribers.
“Individuals involved in open source software projects often
strongly identify themselves as belonging to a community”
(Lakhani and Von Hippel, 2003, p. 937). Individuals who are asso-
ciated with Sourceforge for the longest duration are likely to
experience a greater sense of identification with OSS in general and
the platform in particular. These participants develop a strong sense
of identification with the platform as a result of their OSS ideology,
long association and participation in the community. First, mem-
bers who are associated with the platform for a longer period of
time are more likely to be affiliated with OSS ideology (Stewart and
Gosain, 2006). We argue that longer tenure of these individuals
underscores their steady belief in OSS and desire to remain associ-
ated with OSS and development platform (Hall and Schneider, 1972;
Mael and Ashforth, 1992). Second, it is likely that open source par-
ticipants who have been associated with community longer, have
 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414
had more opportunities to be socialized and socialize others lead-
ing to stronger identification with OSS and Sourceforge (Bar-Tal and
Raviv, 1982; Grusec, 1982; Rushton, 1982). Therefore, we argue that
H2. Individuals with a longer tenure are more likely to donate to
an open source development platform in comparison to those with
a shorter tenure.
The presence of the platform is crucial to any project’s success.
As indicated in Study 1, a project benefits from general platform
use, use of code, project hosting and good technical service, all of
which are enabled by the open source platform. Therefore, individ-
uals who identify with a project are likely to donate to it. But, the
existence of project is conditional on the existence and success of
the platform. Therefore, those who donate to projects are also more
likely to contribute to continue the existence of the online software
platform. This leads us to our next hypothesis
H3. Individuals who donate money to a project are more likely to
donate money to an open source development platform in compar-
ison to those who do not donate to a project.
The open source platform enables donations to individuals. In
the open source environment, where the reputation of program-
mers is primarily determined by their free contribution/donation
of time and code (Raymond, 1998), accepting money for soft-
ware enables a labor marketplace facilitating transactions between
donors and receiver. Participation in this marketplace is optional,
however, i.e., some individuals choose to receive donations while
others do not. A participant who receives donations from oth-
ers or expects to receive donations in the future is more likely to
reciprocate this through donations to the platform. As a result, we
hypothesize that
H4. Individuals who accept donations are more likely to donate to
an open source development platform in comparison to those who
do not accept donations.
3.3. Data and methodology
To test H1–H4, we obtained data from Sourceforge’s public
records. To investigate why developers donate, we look at a sample
of developers consisting of donors and non-donors.
Sourceforge classifies projects based on their activity percentile.
This is a composite index based on these variables—# of forum
posts, # of tasks, # of bugs, # of patches, # of tracker items, # of
commits to Concurrent Version Systems (CVS), # of file releases and
# of downloads. Projects that score high on this index are placed on
the front page of the web site. The site displays two easily accessi-
ble lists—“Most Active Projects, All Time” and “Most Active Projects,
Last Week” prominently.
Previous studies have found that projects on Sourceforge are
very asymmetric in their activity. For instance, many projects report
low level of activity downloads (Healy and Schussman, 2004).
Hence, we believe that looking at projects with low or no activ-
ity may skew the results. For this study, we focused on the top 15%
active projects (from 85 to 100 percentiles) from the all-time list.
Our sample contains information for 8920 individuals working in
these top 15% active projects.
In October 2003, Sourceforge introduced a donation mechanism
using Paypal. This mechanism allows interested parties to donate
to—(a) an individual developer, (b) a project or (c) Sourceforge. One
does not have to be registered to donate. However, registration is
needed to receive appropriate public recognition. At the same time,
any registered community member can choose to accept donations
from others. Sourceforge recognizes individuals in its community
by attaching special symbols next to a userID. Community mem-
bers can acquire special symbols by taking any of these actions—(a)
409
Table 2
Recognition symbols at Sourceforge.Net.
Symbol Description
Administrator of Sourceforge.net website
Sourceforge.net subscriber
Administrator of a project
Users who opted to receive donations via Sourceforge donation system
Donations to Sourceforge.net
Donations from $250 or more (Symbol—blue colored gear)
Donations from $100 to $249 (Symbol—red colored gear)
Donations from $50 to $99 (Symbol—orange colored gear)
Donations from $20 to $49 (Symbol—yellow colored gear)
Donations from $5 to $19 (Symbol—gray colored gear)
Donations to projects hosted on Sourceforge.net
Donations from $250 or more (Symbol—blue colored gear)
Donations from $100 to $249 (Symbol—red colored gear)
Donations from $50 to $99 (Symbol—orange colored gear)
Donations from $20 to $49 (Symbol—yellow colored gear)
Donations from $5 to $19 (Symbol—gray colored gear)
administrator of Sourceforge.net website, (b) Sourceforge.net Sub-
scriber, (c) administrator of a project, (d) donation to Sourceforge,
(e) donation to a project hosted on Sourceforge and (f) accept-
ing money from others. The symbols are shown in Table 2. The
colors of the symbols attached to donors are commensurate with
donation levels. Donors receive two additional benefits—(1) their
userIDs are placed on a web page titled “SF Supporters7 ” and (2)
they are allowed to make a comment on a public page. Donation
data was collected from Sourceforge’s website over a period of 11
months—October 2003 to August 2004.
To address our research question we propose the following logis-
tic regression equation
Prob(Donated to Sourceforge = 1)
= ˛1 + ˇ11 ∗ Accepting Donations + ˇ12 × Subscriber
+ ˇ13 × Donated to an Active Project
+ ˇ14 × Age at time of donation (1)
Sourceforge’s records provide information about acceptance of
donations, subscription status and donation to projects. Age at time
of donation was assessed by registration date and date of donation.
Table 3 shows all the variables used in Study 1 and 2.
3.4. Results
The descriptive statistics of the sample is summarized in Table 1.
A summary of results is shown in Table 4.
Hypotheses H1–H4 were tested using a binomial logistic regres-
sion as shown in Eq. (1). The overall model was significant
(−2 log L chi-square = 161.002 with p = 0.0001 at 4 d.f. and Model
chi-square = 842.787 with p = 0.0001 at 4 d.f.). The coefficient asso-
ciated with “Accepting Donations” was positive and significant
(0.2453, p < 0.0001) and so was the coefficient for “Subscriber”
(0.1445, p < 0.0001). The coefficient for “Donated to Project” was
positive and significant (0.0456, p = 0.0027). The coefficient of “Age
7
http://www.sf.net/supporters.php.
410 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414

Table 3
Variable definitions.

Variables Description/values Used in study

Age at time of donation Donation date—registration date on Sourceforge 1,2

Associated with active projects 1 if associated with at least one top 15% active project (hosted on Sourceforge) and 0 otherwise 2
Subscriber 1 if Sourceforge subscriber, 0 otherwise 1,2
Accepting donations 1 if opted to accept donations via Sourceforge, 0 otherwise. 1,2
Frequency of donations Number of donations/individual to Sourceforge during the period of study. 2
Amount to Sourceforge Total amount donated to Sourceforge during the period of study. 2
Donated to Sourceforge 1 if donated to Sourceforge, 0 otherwise 1
Donated to project 1 if donated to a top 15% active project, 0 otherwise 1

at time of donation” was insignificant (−0.0093, p = 0.8857). Hence, mitment and preference for a long-term relationship (Johnson and
H1, H3 and H4 were supported and H2 was not supported. Garbarino, 2001) with the platform, they are more likely to be inter-
ested in a stronger level of identification and hence, we hypothesize
3.5. Discussion that

H5. Subscribers will donate higher amounts to an online open

Study 2 provides support for three causal antecedents to the
decision to donate—accepting donations, subscriber and donation
to project. The strongest observed effect was for donation accep-
tance. We find that those who accept donations are 34.677 times
more likely to donate than those who do not accept. Individuals who
are subscribers are 10.602 times more likely to donate to the online
OSS platform than non-subscribers which emphasizes the impor-
tance of relational commitment. Project donors are 1.143 times
more likely to donate to Sourceforge than project non-donors.
Study 2 looks at the likelihood of donation—i.e., the give/do not
give decision. It is not clear if the effects observed here would per-
sist if we incorporate the amount of donation. To investigate this
further, we embark on Study 2.
4. Study 2
source platform rather than non-subscribers.
Community is the driving factor for open source software devel-
opment, not profit motivations (Bonaccorsi and Rossi, 2004). In the
open source environment where traditional organizational incen-
tives are absent, open software development ideology is the driving
factor behind donor’s motivations (Markus et al., 2000). Partici-
pants who share strong ideological commitments are likely to work
together on open source projects and this enables a higher level of
team effectiveness (Lakhani and Wolf, 2005; Stewart and Gosain,
2006). Individuals who are associated with Sourceforge for a longer
duration are more likely to believe in OSS ideology (Stewart and
Gosain, 2006). These members would like to donate a high amount
to signal their commitment and to deepen their identification with
the open source community. Thus, our hypothesis is that

H6. Individuals with longer tenure on Sourceforge are more likely

4.1. Introduction
Study 2 aims to identify the drivers that affect the level of giving
to OSS development platform. Reconciling the findings of Study 2
with those in Study 1 will allow us to arrive at a deeper understand-
ing of the commitment to the OSS development platform.
4.2. Hypotheses
To motivate donors to give higher amounts the OSS platform
under study here, Sourceforge.net, has created a tiered recogni-
tion system which awards recognition symbols based on donation
amounts (see Table 2). Those who donate at a higher level obtain
a more prestigious symbol. These symbols act as social incentives
(Andreoni and Petrie, 2004; Rege and Telle, 2004) by sending sig-
nals of commitment to other community members and in doing so,
enhance the prestige of those who own them (Harbaugh, 1998a,b).
Studies in economics and psychology literatures find that donors
value self-esteem and public recognition (Amos, 1982; Dawson,
1988) that comes as a result of donation. Donors led by motiva-
tion of social comparison often compare their contributions with
other donors (Soetevent, 2004). We argue that obtaining such a
symbol, therefore, deepens a developer’s identification with the
OSS community. Since subscribers have a higher satisfaction, com-
to donate a higher amount.
We base our next hypothesis on the theory of reciprocity (Fehr
and Gachter, 2000; Sugden, 1984). Since barriers to creation of an
OSS project on online open source platform are low, there are many
OSS projects which do not go far after their initiation (Healy and
Schussman, 2004). In this environment, highly active projects are
more visible and, can easily attract new contributors. Since com-
munity members are more likely to be interested in a more active
project rather than a project that is going nowhere (Lerner and
Tirole, 2004), active projects become more prestigious and partic-
ipants associated with these projects identify themselves strongly
with the project (Bhattacharya et al., 1995). Association with these
prestigious projects helps enhance self-esteem (Mael and Ashforth,
1992). Individuals who are associated with these active and presti-
gious projects realize the critical roles of OSS development platform
in project success along various dimensions. As identified in Study 1,
these benefits are—general platform use, use of code, use of product,
project hosting, reciprocal link, support of less-active projects, good
technical service and enabling virtual organization. These benefits
are considerable when compared to market alternatives. There-
fore, individuals associated with active projects are more likely to
reciprocate to the OSS development platform (Falk, 2004; Fehr and
Gachter, 2000; Sugden, 1984). Hence, we expect these individuals to

Table 4
Logistic regression results (Study 1).

Variables Standardized estimates Wald chi-square p-Value Odds ratio Results

Accepting donations 0.2453 76.29 0.0001 34.677 Strong support for H4

Subscriber 0.1445 84.61 0.0001 10.602 Strong support for H1
Donated to project 0.0456 8.96 0.0027 1.143 Strong support for H3
Age at time of donation −0.0093 0.02 0.8857 0.999 No support for H2
 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414 411

donate at a higher level. At the same time, those who are not associ- Table 5
Regression results (Study 2).
ated with any active Sourceforge project are likely to display lower
commitment to the community. Hence, we expect these individuals Variable Coefficient Standardized p-Value Result
to donate at a lower level. Therefore, we hypothesize that estimate

Intercept ˛2 0.00 0.0055 N/A

H7. Individuals who are associated with active projects are likely Age at time of donation ˇ21 0.1431 0.0001 Strong
to donate more than those who are not. support for H6
Subscriber ˇ22 0.1726 0.0001 Strong
Those who accept donations from others are also likely to be support for H5
motivated by reciprocity. Public recognition of donations through a Accepting donations ˇ23 −0.1277 0.0003 No support for
H8
display of symbols leads to an enhancement in others’ perceptions
Frequency of donations ˇ24 0.2108 0.0001 Control
and improves reputation. Gains in reputation are likely to improve variable
the future prospects of these individuals (Lerner and Tirole, 2002) Associated with projects ˇ25 −0.0366 0.3314 No support for
in multiple ways—(a) they are likely to have a higher chance of H7
recruiting other participants, (b) they are more likely to be invited RAdj
2
= 0.1012, F(5,829) = 19.787, p = 0.0001.
to join a new project and (c) they are likely to get a quicker response
from other community members for their queries. Therefore, we 4.4. Results
hypothesize that
The descriptive statistics of the dataset used in this study are
H8. Individuals who accept donations are likely to donate higher
summarized in Table 1. The results are summarized in Table 5.
than those who do not accept donations.
Hypotheses H5–H8 were tested using the OLS model in Eq. (2).
The model was significant (F(5,829) = 19.787, p = 0.0001) with an
4.3. Data and methodology adjusted R2 of 0.1012. Variance inflation factors (VIFs)9 were com-
puted for every regression analysis reported in this paper. In all
To test hypotheses 5–8, we use the following regression equa- cases, the VIF values were well below the cutoff value of 10 and are
tion not reported here for brevity.
H5 was strongly supported. The regression coefficient, ˇ22 ,
Amount to Sourceforge = ˛2 + ˇ21 × Age at time of Donation was positive and significant (standardized estimate = 0.1726 and
p = 0.0001). H6 was also strongly supported. The regression
+ ˇ22 × Subscriber coefficient, ˇ21 , was positive and significant (standardized esti-
+ ˇ23 × Accepting Donations mate = 0.1431, p = 0.0001). H7 was not supported (standardized esti-
mate = −0.0366 and p = 0.3314). H8 was not supported. The regres-
+ ˇ24 × Frequency of Donations sion coefficient, ˇ23 , was negative and significant (−0.1277 and
+ ˇ25 × Associated with Active Projects p = 0.0003) whereas the hypothesis was for a positive relationship.

(2) 4.5. Discussion

Our sample consists of a total of 835 donors. These represent

Taking an integrative view of Studies 1 and 2 provides us with
all donors to the Sourceforge site from October 2003 to August
a nuanced understanding of the motivation of open source devel-
2004. Donation data was collected from Sourceforge’s website8 .
opers. First, we have a significant, positive effect for subscribers in
During this period, 835 donors donated to Sourceforge.net. While
terms of probability of donation to Sourceforge (Study 1) as well as
the dataset for Study 1 contained both donors and non-donors, the
the amount of donation (Study 2). Subscribers not only want rela-
dataset for Study 2 contains only donors. The descriptive statistics of
tional benefits by donating to Sourceforge (Study 1), they also want
the dataset used in this study is summarized in Table 1. “Frequency
to deepen their identification with the community (Study 2).
of donations” is included as a control variable in this context to
Second, tenure with Sourceforge was not significant in Study 1,
rule out the simple explanation that frequent givers donate higher
while it was significant in Study 2. Thus, individuals associated with
amounts. It was measured using historical donation data obtained
Sourceforge over a long period of time are not more likely to give,
from the Sourceforge website. Subscription and acceptance status
but those who decide to give, donate at a higher level. One likely
was ascertained from the Sourceforge website. Age at the time of
explanation for this is that tenure with Sourceforge does not equate
Donation was calculated using the method described in Study 1.
with engagement in open source activities. Therefore, it is possible
Sourceforge does not explicitly provide the donation amount
that our results are picking up the level of engagement, i.e., those
associated with a donor. Therefore, in order to determine the asso-
who are highly engaged donate more while those who registered
ciation with the recognition symbols shown in Table 1 and the
early but lost interest do not donate. We do not have the data to
donation amount, we adopted two forms of inquiry. First, two
flesh this out and leave it for future research.
researchers registered on Sourceforge and made donations at dif-
Interestingly, those who accept donations are more likely to
ferent levels. The resulting symbols allowed us to understand the
donate to Sourceforge (Study 1), but contrary to our hypothesis,
correlation between donation levels and recognition symbols. Sec-
they are more likely to donate a lower amount (Study 2). This
ond, some of the aforementioned qualitative comments included
is a counterintuitive finding that deserves further investigation.
references to donation amounts. Our findings from the first method
were verified using this method. For each donation tier, the mid-
point was chosen for the regression analysis. For instance, if the
9
Variance inflation factors (VIFs) diagnose multicolinearity problems in regres-
donation tier was in the $20–49 range, we set the donation amount
sion analysis. VIFs are calculated by a series of regressions among the independent
at $34.5 (i.e., 20 + 49/2). variables. If a regression involves independent variables X1 , X2 , . . ., Xn , the first
regression would treat X1 as the dependent variable and X2 , . . ., Xn as the indepen-
dent variables. The VIF for this variable would then be 1/(1 − R2 ) of this regression.
This process would be repeated for each independent variable leading to one VIF for
8
http://www.sf.net/supporters.php. each of the independent variables.
412 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414

Table 6a
Qualitative analysis (reciprocity).

Donor ID Indicative qualitative comment Theme

Tyc-pros “I’ve been using Sourceforge for quite a while, and like it very much, a small token of gratitude.” General platform use
Cyberfox “Incredibly useful service! SF gives me the tools to develop, distribute & maintain my open software.”
Borundin “I’m using several projects hosted here. Time to support it!” Use of code
believe in geek “I’ve been using this site for apps for a while, $5 won’t hurt me too much.”
danhrainey “HomesightRemote Works Great” Use of product
rmargiot “Thanks for the pdfCreator, just what I was looking for.”
bzrudi “Thanks for hosting us (LinPHA—The PHP Photo Archive).” Project hosting
Ahc “Thanks for the exposure my project gets from this site.”
xc06 “I appreciate you give a backlink for my directory http://www.cbgred.com for sometime.” Reciprocal link
raboofje “Thanks for hosting those less active projects that might otherwise have been lost entirely.” Support of less-active projects
truckfixer “Special thanks to burley for some great tech support help.” Good technical service
cybercerberus “SF.net has made my project’s international collaboration possible!” Enabling virtual organization

It might be that these individuals are token givers who wish to
benefit from the increased recognition of being a donor through
display of symbols, but would like to minimize their disutility from
giving.
finish a pre-defined task and organizations such as LinuxFund10
provide grants for working on OSS projects. These economic
arrangements need to be examined in future studies.
Acknowledgements

5. Conclusion Authors wish to thank Sandra Slaughter, Carnegie Mellon Uni-

Extrinsic motivation in open source software development has
received a lot of attention (Bonaccorsi and Rossi, 2004; Lerner
and Tirole, 2002, 2004; Roberts et al., 2002, 2006). However, the
exclusive focus of the current literature has been on the impact of
money on the development of open source software at the level
of the individual developer. We add to this literature by study-
ing a hitherto unexplored area—monetary donations to an open
source development platform. Our data is consistent with two
explanations—reciprocity and identification theories. The decision
to donate is affected by the acceptance of donations, being a sub-
scriber to the platform and donations to a project. The amount of
donation is affected by the age at time of donation and subscription.
One of the contributions of our work is the finding that even
in the context of providing monetary donations to open source,
developers might not be entirely altruistic. Rather, they might be
pursuing ways of ensuring private gains. Since Sourceforge provides
a public acknowledgement of the donation (see Table 2), donors
gain in terms of reputation—a private benefit. This co-existence of
motives (i.e., public and private gain) provides a more rich under-
standing of open source developers and must be explored further
in future studies.
Managers of online open source platforms should find our
results useful as they plan strategies to ensure the viability and
sustainability of the ecosystem. From a managerial perspective,
Sourceforge has to worry about how to spend the marginal dollar to
encourage potential donors to contribute. Our findings suggest that
the two most useful ways of encouraging donors might be to cre-
ate a financial community where participants get recognized for
contribution and to put in place a subscription program. Each of
these programs requires little initial investment and can scale with
community size.
Many areas deserve further investigation. Future research will
investigate donor motivations through surveys. The caveats listed
in Lerner and Tirole (2004) (p. 11) must be kept in mind while con-
ducting such studies. Second, we need to better understand what
happens to those who donate. Do these individuals gain in status
among their peers? Are they more likely to be recruited for new
projects? Similar questions arise at the project level. Do donations
to projects accelerate the development process? What happens to
those that receive no money?
In addition to voluntary contributions (the topic of this paper),
paid employees work on OSS projects alongside unpaid volunteers,
bounty/reward programs provide OSS developers an incentive to
versity and Josh Lerner, Harvard University for their comments on
an earlier version of this paper. Arvind Tripathi thanks Global Busi-
ness Center, University of Washington Business School for their
generous support.
Appendix A
Prior to a quantitative examination, we sought support for
our theories with a qualitative examination of donor motivations.
Sourceforge allows donors to post qualitative comments imme-
diately after donating. An analysis of these qualitative comments
provides insights into the motivations of donors. There is a long
tradition of qualitative inquiry in the MIS discipline (Alter, 1978;
Blanton et al., 1992; Grandon, 1995; Pawlowski and Daniel, 2004).
However, barring early studies (Raymond, 1998), qualitative inquiry
is limited in the open source literature and hence our work makes
a unique contribution.
First, we provide qualitative evidence in support of reciprocity.
At the time of donation, it was extremely common for commu-
nity members to identify a specific benefit that they received from
Sourceforge. The fact that they were reciprocating this benefit by
donation was also made very clear in many comments. Based on
our analysis of the qualitative data (Table 6a), we identified eight
themes that drove the reciprocity of donors—general platform use,
use of code, use of product, project hosting, reciprocal link, support
of less-active projects, good technical service and enabling virtual
organization. We briefly discuss these themes now.
In general, community members seemed to appreciate the avail-
ability of the platform and were eager to reciprocate their use
of it. The single most common word in all qualitative comments
was “Thanks”. Many comments explicitly cited a need to recipro-
cate the benefits. For instance, the comment by Borundin included
in Table 6a says that it is “Time to support it (Sourceforge)”.
Some members indicated an appreciation for the wide variety
of tasks one could accomplish on Sourceforge, i.e., general plat-
form use. Many of these comments identified multiple benefits
from the platform—e.g. Cyberfox’ comment included in Table 6a
points out that Sourceforge provides tools to “develop, distribute
and maintain my open software.” Others focused on the use of
the intellectual capital made available through the platform in the
form of code or software programs—e.g. danhrainey’s comment in
10
http://www.linuxfund.org.
 S. Krishnamurthy, A.K. Tripathi / Research Policy 38 (2009) 404–414
Table 6b
Qualitative analysis (identification).
Donor ID Indicative qualitative comment
whitpa “SourceForge has become a vital. – in every sense of the word – open source enabler.”
tenthdeity “Wish I could donate more. Sourceforge is making history.”
spankydog “SourceForge—an amazing concept with great results. Many thanks.”
mascott “I have come to believe in Sourceforge and their principles.”
ptrthomas “Been using sf.net for years, and it is the best.”
cryonator “SourceForge brings together everything and everyone necessary for great projects to happen.”
Table 6a simply says-“HomeSightRemote Works Great”. These con-
tributors felt a need to contribute to the platform for successful
product use since they understood the relationship between plat-
form success and project success. Still others explicitly pointed
out the role of the platform in the success of their project either
through hosting, providing a virtual organization or through a
reciprocal link. In all these cases, community members indicated
a strong interest in reciprocating this benefit through a dona-
tion.
Next, in Table 6b, we provide quotes indicative of the
sense of identification that donors have with Sourceforge.
We classified these qualitative comments into four emergent
themes—identification through open source platform efficacy,
identification through OSS ideology, identification through long
association and identification through community. A large set of
comments described the member’s identification with Sourceforge
as a result of its efficacy. Members identified with Sourceforge for
the simple reason that it works in achieving its stated purpose (e.g.
whitpa’s comment shown in Table 6b—“SourceForge has become
a vital – in every sense of the word – open source enabler.”) At
the same time, these members viewed the platform as offering
something vitally important and unique. The sense of identifi-
cation emerged from the magnitude of the contribution of the
platform and its historic place (e.g. tenthdeity’s comment shown
in Table 6b—“Wish I could donate more. Sourceforge is making his-
tory.”) Others identified with Sourceforge due to its support for the
open source methodology and its philosophical underpinnings. Still
others simply identified with the platform because of their long
association with it or the sense of community that it engenders.
In sum, the qualitative analysis is consistent with the two theo-
retical bases that we draw from.
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