A Social Capital Perspective of Participant Contribution in Open Source Communities: The Case of Linux

Drawing upon a perspective of social capital, we investigate the extent to which several key dimensions of social capital accumulated during the growing stage of thread evolution influence both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of participant contribution in open source software development communities. To validate our hypotheses, we collected data from 223 Linux kernel threads, in which intensive intellectual and social interactions occur among the participants. The results suggest that the structural dimension of network capital (network centralization) is significantly associated with contribution quality, but not with contribution quantity. In contrast, the relational (network strength) and the dynamic (network growing speed) dimensions of network capital are significantly associated with contribution quantity, but not with contribution quality. The governance dimension (administrator participation) of network capital was found to be negatively significant on both the quality and quantity of contribution. Finally, no significant relationship was found between contribution quantity and contribution quality.