Title: Identifying how determinants impact security-based open source software project success using rule induction

Authors: Barry A. Wray, Richard G. Mathieu, Jay M. Teets

Addresses: Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, Cameron School of Business, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28403, USA. ' Department of Computer Information Systems and Management Science, MSC 0202, College of Business, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA. ' Department of Management, Marketing, and Law, Wall College of Business Administration, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC 29526, USA

Abstract: Open Source Software (OSS) projects permit users the freedom to use their software code for any purpose. The code can be studied, modified and freely redistributed. Even though OSS is free, the profit potential of OSS projects is becoming very attractive to software development companies. The potential financial gain for a developer lies in the support/maintenance and proprietary add-on features they can provide for their product. While there is extensive academic literature on Information System (IS) success, there are no empirical studies identifying the determinants of OSS project success. The contribution of this research is a model for the success of security-based OSS projects based on a rule induction approach. This empirical study is based onthe analysis of publicly available data from a repository of OSS project data (SourceForge.net).

Keywords: open source software; OSS; rule induction; classification and regression trees; CART; SourceForge; security; software projects; project success.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEMR.2009.025249

International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2009 Vol.2 No.4, pp.352 - 362

Published online: 17 May 2009 *

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