Key ideas

Comparing open source software and a collaborative animation website (Newgrounds) creating collabs

Completing a collab.

Unlike OSS projects and Wikipedia articles, collabs are not constantly improved and re-released many times. Rather, they are typically released to the public just once, much like an independent film debut, and almost never changed again

• only completed collabs are available for audiences
• ratings contribute to karma for each participant
• may generate income (ad share, cash prizes)

• amount of planning and structure
  • spelling out formats, tech guidelines
• leader's reputation
• activity in thread (virtuous circle)

• “never truly completed, only abandoned”
• “successful traditional projects may end with a public release, while many OSS projects begin with a public release, contributed by the leader to attract co-developers”

English and Schweik [13] produced a six-part classification, based on phone interviews with OSS developers, manual coding of a sample of OSS projects from SourceForge.net, and theoretical insights from Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” [15]. In this system, OSS projects can be successful, abandoned, or indeterminate at two key stages in their life cycle, Initiation and Growth. A successful Initiation stage is defined as OSS developers achieving a first release, and a successful Growth stage is defined as achieving three subsequent releases. English and Schweik operationalized these definitions and tested them on 110,933 SourceForge projects, with low error rates.

Wiggins and Crowston [22] validated a refined version with another SourceForge data set, also with good results. Of 117,733 projects, they classified 31% as abandoned at the Initiation stage, 28% as abandoned at the Growth stage, and 14% as successful at both the Initiation and Growth stages.

Crowston and colleagues [9] developed a set of 18 measures of OSS success, organized into four system process phases: creation and maintenance, quality, use, and consequences. These measures were based on DeLone and McLean’s process model for information systems [11], a literature review of success measures in OSS research, and a survey of OSS developers SlashDot.org. The authors validated their model by operationalizing three of the 18 measures—number of developers, bug-fixing time, and popularity—and testing them on a sample of 120 SourceForge projects. The resulting correlations between measures suggested high convergent validity

Success Factors:

• intrinsic motivation and self-selection for tasks [4,19,21];
• a charismatic, capable leader [19,20,21];
• a meritocratic, rational culture [19,21,23];
• a modular, granular division of labor [4,21]; and
• use of collaborative technologies, such as CVS, TODO lists,
• mailing lists [14,23] p 3

OSS and professional film productions have specialized division of labor, whereas collabs are separated by episode (modularized), within each episode one person fulfills all roles.