Code Reuse in Open Source Software

Stefan Haefliger (), Georg von Krogh () and Sebastian Spaeth ()
Additional contact information
Stefan Haefliger: Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland
Georg von Krogh: Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland
Sebastian Spaeth: Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland

Management Science, 2008, vol. 54, issue 1, 180-193

Abstract: Code reuse is a form of knowledge reuse in software development that is fundamental to innovation in many fields. However, to date there has been no systematic investigation of code reuse in open source software projects. This study uses quantitative and qualitative data gathered from a sample of six open source software projects to explore two sets of research questions derived from the literature on software reuse in firms and open source software development. We find that code reuse is extensive across the sample and that open source software developers, much like developers in firms, apply tools that lower their search costs for knowledge and code, assess the quality of software components, and have incentives to reuse code. Open source software developers reuse code because they want to integrate functionality quickly, because they want to write preferred code, because they operate under limited resources in terms of time and skills, and because they can mitigate development costs through code reuse.

Keywords: innovation; private-collective innovation model; incentives; software development; knowledge reuse; software reuse; open source software (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1070.0748 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:54:y:2008:i:1:p:180-193

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().