Developer ecosystems and adoption · Peer-reviewed empirical study or research synthesis
How Peripheral Developers Contribute to Open-Source Software Development
Setia, P., Rajagopalan, B., Sambamurthy, V., & Calantone, R. (2012). How Peripheral Developers Contribute to Open-Source Software Development. Information Systems Research.
Plain-English take
Peripheral developers made significant contributions to product quality and diffusion, especially when projects were in more mature product-development stages. Founder-use interpretation: Use this as a question to test in your own product context, not as a universal benchmark. The publisher abstract does not report a dedicated limitations section. The study is observational and its sample consists of 147 open-source products, so representativeness, measurement validity, and causal interpretation beyond the sampled projects cannot be established from the publisher record alone.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 Relevant empirical or synthesis evidence with transfer limits
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Based on the reported design.
Context and reporting are stated; representativeness is bounded.
Comparison detail varies by publisher access.
Publisher record directly retrieved; full methods may not be accessible.
Double-blind? Not established in this retrieval.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How Peripheral Developers Contribute to Open-Source Software Development?
Design
Longitudinal observational study of open-source products using hierarchical linear modeling to estimate how peripheral-developer involvement relates to product quality and diffusion over product-development stages.
Sample and setting
147 open-source software products; peripheral developers are external volunteers whose contributions include product-quality work and word-of-mouth advocacy/diffusion.
Reported result
What the study found
Peripheral developers made significant contributions to product quality and diffusion, especially when projects were in more mature product-development stages.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The publisher abstract does not report a dedicated limitations section. The study is observational and its sample consists of 147 open-source products, so representativeness, measurement validity, and causal interpretation beyond the sampled projects cannot be established from the publisher record alone.
Possible founder application
Use this as a question to test in your own product context, not as a universal benchmark. The publisher abstract does not report a dedicated limitations section. The study is observational and its sample consists of 147 open-source products, so representativeness, measurement validity, and causal interpretation beyond the sampled projects cannot be established from the publisher record alone.
Evidence access
Publisher article or abstract page directly retrieved with Firecrawl; full methods access varies.
Publisher record directly retrieved with Firecrawl (reference 01a122cb-0315-7609-866e-c5ea0a7a6079); summary is a careful paraphrase of the accessible record.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.