The Effect of Knowledge Sharing on Open Source Contribution: A Multi-platform Perspective

Abstract

Open source software (OSS) community plays a key role in contemporary software development. However, there is a need to better understand the factors which influence individuals’ voluntary contribution on open source platforms. In this paper, we investigate how different types of knowledge sharing affect an individuals’ contribution towards open source projects. We further refine knowledge sharing taxonomy by classifying explicit knowledge sharing into two sub-types – strong explicit knowledge sharing and weak explicit knowledge sharing, depending on the extent of interpersonal interaction required for knowledge transfer. In this paper, we take a multi-platform perspective – we collect data from GitHub – the biggest online platform to host open source software development, and Gitter – an open source instant messaging and chat room application designed for developers. We map the user identities across these two platforms. We analyze monthly panel data for the year 2017 consisting of 3,695 individuals. The results demonstrate that both strong and weak explicit knowledge sharing have positive relationship with open source contribution. Moreover, the tacit knowledge sharing positively moderates these relationships. Our paper extends the theoretical understanding of different knowledge sharing types and their inter-relationship, and their respective impact on contribution. Our findings have important implications for the OSS community, and especially help OSS platform designers get a better understanding of the symbiosis between different OSS platforms.