Abstract:
In recent years, the success of open source software (OSS) has attracted proprietary software firms, who now actively participate, and sponsor OSS development. Though researchers agree that for the progress of OSS projects, financial support, rewards, and incentives are critical if not essential, we are yet to understand the dynamics of compensation structures/policies and their impact on the long-term sustainability of OSS projects and communities. In this research, we aim to explore the role of developers’ perceived asymmetry in compensation in OSS projects. Using grounded theory procedures to code and analyse the textual responses from the developers, we find a mixed opinion on whether the perceived asymmetric distribution of project’s financial resources, helps or impedes the progress of an OSS project. We find that fair-terms, transparency and effective communication practices are essential to the sustainability of OSS projects, even with perceived asymmetric compensation.
